Bid to move $36m suit to Yangon fails
A woman who allegedly diverted more than US$23.5 million (S$35.6 million) from Myanmar into bank accounts here failed in her bid to get the suit against her heard in Yangon instead of Singapore.The monies, partly conveyed in cash between 2005 and last year, were meant to be placed with the local accounts belonging to Focus Energy, a Brithish Virgin Islands – registered firm helping Myanmar to boost oil production.
But Myanmar national Aye Aye Soe is said to have wrongfully obtained the consent of a former managing director of the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise to have the monies placed in her personal accounts here instead. A housewife in her 30s, she had become one of the two directors of the receiving firm, focus Energy, after her husband died in August 2004. She apparently managed to divert the funds by pledging the monies would be used only for her firm's legal purposes.
Madam Soe is also alleged to have conspired with the courier firm to charge Focus Energy a 5 per cent shipment commision, keeping 3 per cent for herself. Cash shipments of some of the funds were done after the Myanmar government banned telegraphic transfers in 2004, but even after such payments resumed in January 2006, the monies continued to be paid into her accounts. Madam Soe, through lawyer Solomon Richard, denied getting a cut of the commission. She claimed the monies were kept in her account temporarily for the company to continue operating smoothly while a dispute with the other director Unni Christen was being resolved.
Last month, lawyers Harish Kumar and Goh Seow Hui, who are acting for Focus Energy, obtained a court order to proceed with a probe into her personal bank accounts here and recover the funds due to the firm. Madam Soe countered that the case should be heard by a Myanmar court as the alleged wrongs and diversions occurred there, she was domiciled there and the witnesses there were unlikely to come here to testify. But Justice Judith Prakash said Madam Soe had admitted that the monies were diverted to her accounts here. Singapore was thus the more appropriate forum to here the case as the bank accounts and the relevant evidence were located here.
[Source: The Straits Times]
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