ECONOMY / BUSINESS
Australian Woman’s Fight to Prove Singapore Fraud
Harassed and vilified by unknown parties, she continues to press case despite bank’s explanations
John Berthelsen
Jan 12
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For six years, an Australian woman named Julie O’Connor (above) has vainly been tilting against the Singapore establishment in an effort to raise claims of fraud and what she calls a cover-up by powerful people over the acquisition of the Singapore and Vietnam assets of an Australia-based firm, Strategic Marine Pty Ltd. She alleges her husband Terry O'Connor, a shareholder, was thwarted in his attempts to acquire a controlling interest via pre-emptive rights he possessed.
For her efforts, O’Connor says she has been vilified on social media, publicly referred to online as a cockroach, obese, her photographs have been doctored into news articles which falsely showed her family members as being convicted pedophiles, all while she says she has otherwise been ignored by Singapore officials, all of whom repeatedly argue that evidence of any crime in Singapore is lacking.
Facebook attack
O’Connor says she has recently been notified by Facebook (below) that she has been targeted by sophisticated spyware not normally used by individuals but rather intrusive states, along with several other Singaporeans at odds with authorities including independent journalists Terry Xu and Kirsten Han and others. There is no indication of where the attacks are coming from.
Attempts also have been made to hack O’Connor’s website,
www.bankingonthetruth.com, and intimidating messages have been posted threatening that someone would fly to Australia to kill her, as the screenshots below show.
As far as O’Connor knows, these online attacks/emails have never been investigated by Singapore police, even though some have been sent to her husband and daughter at their place of work. Senior figures from DBS, Singapore Police, and the Singapore Government were copied in, she says.
O’Connor has bombarded DBS Bank, Southeast Asia’s and Singapore’s largest in terms of assets, with emails and letters and has sought help from Marcus Lim, manager of the DBS account for the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a Senior PAP minister and chairman of the MAS, Lucien Wong, Singapore’s attorney general, K Shanmugam, the Singapore law minister, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong himself, to no avail.
Enquiries by Asia Sentinel to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Ministry of Law, and other agencies were met with minimal comment. A spokeswoman for the MAS said ‘MAS takes all allegations of fraud seriously, and had responded to Ms. O’Connor earlier and followed up on her concerns. Our engagements with members of the public and financial institutions are confidential, and the details of such interactions are not shared with third parties.”
The office of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Asia Sentinel by email that the office has “corresponded directly with Ms. Julie O’Connor regarding her allegations, and will continue to engage her as necessary. We will not be commenting further on the matter, or responding to the questions you have posed, as it is inappropriate for us to discuss such matters with third parties.”
Allegations against tycoon
O’Connor’s allegations involve Lionel Lee Chye Tek, who at the time was managing director of Ezra Holdings and chairman of its subsidiary Triyards, which were involved in offshore services, ship construction, global offshore, and marine industries. The group at that time was aiming to consolidate its position as one of the largest offshore services players in the Asia-Pacific region and was, at that point, darling on the Stock Exchange of Singapore
Lionel Lee was alleged by others to have caused four forged signatures to be affixed to legal documents on behalf of a no-longer-operating Bahamas company, documents which related to Strategic Marine, the firm Lionel Lee’s company was attempting to acquire. An associate of Lee, the then-CEO of KTL Global, Tan Kheng Yeow, was allegedly enlisted to enter into an irrevocable option deed to acquire power of attorney for the company. O’Connor charged that was an attempt to defraud her husband by persuading him his claim was worthless and that he should sell his 4 percent shareholding for A$1.
After Lee’s initial attempt to acquire Strategic Marine through Tan – for A$7 – was frustrated due to allegations of forgery, DBS would enter the arena. At issue with DBS, she said, were two letters purportedly from bank officials that were used to downgrade Strategic Marine’s week-old independent valuation by A$30-40 million and retroactively strip away O’Connor’s exercised pre-emptive right, prior to Lee’s attempt to acquire the firm for just A$1.265 million. A request to the DBS law firm Wong Partnership to explain the valuation downgrade was not answered.
DBS’s legal staff, O’Connor alleged, was asked by Australian legal firm Minter Ellison to authenticate the two letters, which she displayed for Asia Sentinel and which she describes as littered with errors or irregularities that banks aren’t supposed to make, including lack of a bank address on the stationery, absence of reference, and missing or duplicate bullet points. After eight weeks, she says, during which time Lee completed the acquisition, DBS refused to authenticate the letters, citing banking secrecy obligations.
DBS, through Wong Partnership, says its investigations “confirmed that the two letters in question are authentic and originated from our clients. Further, the results of these investigations were provided to Mr. & Mrs. O’Connor on previous occasions and that the O’Connors refused to accept the findings.”
Lee, acting on behalf of Triyards, ultimately acquired the Strategic Marine assets despite the Triyards Board’s awareness of O’Connor’s husband’s exercise of his pre-emptive right, the O’Connors charge. Lee at the time was represented by the high-profile Singapore law firm Allen & Gledhill, which was headed by the current Attorney General Lucien Wong. Lee's personal lawyer was said to be Edwin Tong, now Singapore’s second law minister.
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