“The financial position of the company was suspect, and should have primed the defendant to look further and obtain a picture of the true state of the affairs of the company and monitor what was happening within it,” the judge said. “That was his duty as a director.”
Singapore’s High Court has found Goh Jin Hian liable for US$146 million in losses under his watch as director of a now-insolvent marine fuel supplying company, adding to the legal problems facing the son of former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.
Doing his duties “would have led him to realize that the company was being defrauded,” Justice Aedit Abdullah said in published remarks dated Jan 24 on a petition involving Inter-Pacific Petroleum. The defense argued there was no such breach or causation of loss, and regardless, the company qualifies for relief from liability under the Companies Act.
