A Vietnamese captain was jailed for five and a half years for his involvement in stealing more than 8,000 tonnes of marine gas oil from a Shell refinery in Singapore over a two-year period.
In fact, it is estimated that the master pocketed up to $90,000 from his involvement in shipping fuel, worth of $5.7m from Shell’s Pulau Bukom refinery, the company’s largest petrochemical production and export center in the Asia-Pacific region, on 10 occasions between 2016 and 2017.
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The operation involved two Vietnamese vessels and several Shell employees. Many have been arrested and prosecutors now describe it as “unprecedented” in scale.
The Vietnamese captain is second to be charged in sweeping case over scam in Singapore; a chief officer who worked with him was the first person jailed in the case, with others expected to be handed sentences soon.
In was in early 2018, when it was reported that a large scale oil theft took place at a Shell’s refinery in Singapore, with at least eleven men having being charged with connection to the case, as of January 2018, while police informed that another six men were being investigated, after being arrested.
The police investigation was initiated after Shell contacted the authorities, during the summer of 2017, after which the police began simultaneous raids across the country, which resulted in some arrests.
Namely, nine Singapore nationals were charged for theft, with eight of them working for Royal Dutch Shell’s subsidiary in Singapore. Moreover, another two Vietnamese were charged, after receiving stolen products. What is more, the company confirmed that out of the eleven men that were charged, eight of them were currently working or used to be working for Shell Eastern Petroleum.
In July 2019, a man linked to a case involving 340,000 tonnes of stolen gas oil worth more than $200 million – the largest ever in Singapore – was jailed for two and a half years, after pleading guilty to have received 5,600 metric tonnes of marine gasoil (MGO) stolen from Shell’s Pulau Bukom refinery.
According to sources, the was working as the chief officer of a vessel known as the Prime Sun when it docked at Wharf 3 at Shell at Pulau Bukom to load gas oil on September 9, 2016. In the meantime, as Channel News Asia reported, the defendant pleaded guilty on receiving the stolen marine fuel, on four occasions, between July 2016 and Jan 2018.
