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The Straits Times
www.straitstimes.com
Published on Apr 23, 2013
Sham investment plot motivated by directors' greed: DPP
Trio's Boron scheme to sell fuel additive was fraudulent: Prosecution
By Khushwant Singh
GREED was what motivated three directors of Profitable Plots charged with cheating 86 clients, by getting them to put more than $8 million into an alleged sham investment scheme.
That was Deputy Public Prosecutor Luke Tan's opening statement yesterday as the trial of the two British men and a Singaporean woman began yesterday.
The three directors are Timothy Nicholas Goldring, 58; John Andrew Nordmann, 54; and Nordmann's wife Geraldine Anthony Thomas, 44.
Each of them faces 86 charges of allegedly conspiring with each other to cheat clients by offering a 12.5 per cent return within a maximum of six months.
DPP Tan said that when faced with the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, the group's main business of selling land in the United Kingdom to investors suffered losses.
To ease cash-flow problems, the trio allegedly hatched a plan to get clients to pump money into the Boron scheme, which involved financing the sale of a fuel additive known as Boron CLS Bond to major corporations.
DPP Tan said the company touted the Boron scheme as virtually risk-free and with high fixed returns as the lubricant had been "pre-sold" to the corporations.
"Unfortunately, these representations, while sounding good, were definitively untrue," the prosecutor said.
The bulk of the investment money ended up being used for unrelated purposes and expenses - everything except the purchase of Boron CLS Bond products.
The prosecution is also alleging that the trio had issued documents for the transfer of the fuel additive to investors, but these were from a Dubai-registered company known as Profitable Group.
DPP Tan said that this was a shell company, set up and run by the trio to distance themselves from the Boron scheme and the misrepresentations made to investors in Singapore.
The prosecution intends to produce police statements made by the three directors and evidence from 54 witnesses, including an accountant, that will expose the flaws of the Boron scheme.
Several victims of the alleged fraud will also take the stand.
The trio however insist that they had operated a viable investment scheme.
When cross-examining the first witness, Mr Lim Kok Meng of the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD), defence lawyer Wendell Wong accused the police agency of overreacting to rumours and "commercially killing the investment scheme by raiding its offices, seizing documents and freezing bank accounts" in August 2011.
To support this argument, he produced e-mail messages between disgruntled investors and Mr David Gerald, president and chief executive of the Securities Investors Association (Singapore), which were forwarded to CAD.
Mr Wong further accused Mr Lim of being "fixated" on the trio being crooked to such an extent that he did not attempt to interview the other directors.
Mr Lim had told the prosecution that the trio had paid themselves huge salaries, bonuses and dividends.
The trial continues today.
khush@sph.com.sg