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IN THE PROCESS OF BEING UPDATED TO ADD MORE DETAIL

 

The two DBS letters below were used to wipe between A$30M - A$40M—a staggering 92.2% - 96.6%—off a one-week-old valuation of a company that an influential Singapore client of DBS was attempting to acquire. But this was just the tip of the iceberg. The same client would later be implicated in allegations of non-disclosures, misleading disclosures, a scheme to manipulate share prices, insider trading, and more—all involving a SGX-listed group.

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When the now-banned in Singapore, Asia Sentinel, wrote to the former Prime Minister and DBS about some of my complaints, DBS lawyers accused me of acting with malice, and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) responded with its usual polished deflection: "We will continue to engage with Mrs. O’Connor." Engage? So why the spin? Why not tell the truth, even though there were mounting conflicts of interest, there would be NO INVESTIGATION, and the case was closed due to "insufficient evidence"

 

I have recently asked PM Lawrence Wong and DPM Mr. Gan Kim Yong who is also Chairman of the banking regulator MAS to put themselves in my shoes:

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• Imagine, just for a moment, that it was you, not me, who had uncovered the allegations of forgery which implicated an influential DBS client, and which would have been exposed in a writ had it not been hidden after a A$3.5M incentive was offered.​​

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• Imagine that it was you and not me who uncovered a sham option deed that was either drafted by the law firm representing the DBS client, which was led by the current Attorney General, or was a fraudulent copy.
   

• Then, imagine if as part of the same transaction, you were handed the two DBS letters below—letters purportedly from a world-class bank:
   

  • The receipt of both these DBS letters was very timely, and instrumental in wiping out up to 96.6% of a company’s valuation and your shares—just one week after it had been assessed, and prior to a member of the EZRA Holdings group, a DBS client, making an acquisition attempt.
     

  • Would you have questioned the authenticity of these letters, given that previous correspondence to this same client was of a far higher standard? Or would you have shrugged it off, deciding that, actually, DBS letters have always been this shoddy—riddled with errors and amateurishly drafted—and that the earlier, more polished versions were the real anomaly?
     

  • Would you be satisfied if, after your lawyer escalated concerns to DBS’s most senior legal figure, it took nearly eight weeks for their department to respond—only for them to dodge every question behind the convenient shield of "banking secrecy obligations"? And in the meantime, the very transaction at the heart of those concerns was quietly allowed to proceed, letting the damage become irreversible.
     

  • Would you question why the DBS client offered you and others a financial incentive to sweep allegations of forgery under the rug—to hand over evidence, including the DBS letters and Allen & Gledhill option deeds, and to provide letters retracting complaints made to DBS and regulators? Or would you simply nod along and chalk it up to an act of generosity from a benevolent individual?
     

  • Would you be concerned if a senior figure from DBS Legal insisted that these DBS letters could not be referenced in a whistleblower submission—warning that if they were, the submission would simply not be accepted? Or would you take comfort in the notion that whistleblowing in Singapore only works if you carefully avoid mentioning the inconvenient evidence?
     

  • Would you dismiss it as mere coincidence that two DBS Group Heads of Financial Crime, a DBS Group Company Secretary, and two PwC Partners overseeing the DBS audit—all of whom you turned to for assistance—left their roles? Call it routine senior staff turnover, if you will, but would you not question the departure of a highly lauded figure who had been in the role for less than 12 months?
     

• Even if we give DBS the benefit of the doubt—assuming sheer incompetence rather than outright misconduct was behind the 'dubious' DBS letters—two glaring question remain: Why did DBS’s most senior legal officer take nearly eight weeks to refuse authentication of letters that were central to a conspiracy to defraud, during which time DBS should have known that the transaction would take place, because it had to agree? And why did an individual from the same department later dictate that the DBS letters could not be referred to in a whistleblower submission?
   

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There are three different signatures, all purportedly penned by Audrey Koh of DBS. DBS claims they are all authentic.
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