A court found she hid an $8.5 million fixed deposit failure through falsified documents
A Singapore district court has ruled against a former accountant who failed to place more than $8.5 million in a fixed deposit and then submitted falsified financial documents to conceal the oversight.
District Judge Tay Jingxi ordered the former accountant to pay her former employer $119,490.14 in damages, ruling that the defendant had breached her employment contract and acted fraudulently in misrepresenting the status of company funds to her superiors.
Fixed deposit failure
The defendant was employed as an accountant in the finance department of a wholly-owned subsidiary of a company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange mainboard, from March 2022 until April 2024.
From March 2023, her duties included placing company funds in fixed deposits and preparing bank reconciliation statements, responsibilities inherited from a departing colleague.
Between December 2023 and March 2024, the defendant failed to place a sum of $8,525,666.66 in a fixed deposit as required.
Rather than disclose the lapse, she submitted a series of financial documents to her Financial Controller, falsely representing that the placement had been made. She also attached a falsified HSBC bank statement showing a current account balance of just $8,950 — when the true balance exceeded $8.5 million.
The concealment unravelled in May 2024, after the defendant had already resigned and served out her notice period, when a colleague received a call from an HSBC relationship manager following up on whether the company still wished to place a fixed deposit. The claimant subsequently placed the funds with Union Bancaire Privé on May 31, 2024.
The court's findings
Tay found comprehensively in favour of the claimant across seven issues, concluding that the defendant's contractual duties included placing fixed deposits, that she had plainly failed to do so, and that she had knowingly submitted false documents to cover her tracks.
On the falsified bank statement, which showed a balance of $8,950 against a verified true balance of $8,534,616.66, the court identified clear signs of tampering.
The judgment noted that the figures "8,950" in the statement appeared in a font "inexplicably different" from surrounding text, and that the same figure in the transaction row "sits slightly lower than the rest of the transaction information in the same row" – inconsistencies the defendant herself conceded under cross-examination but offered no explanation for.
The court rejected the defendant's suggestion that the discrepancies might have stemmed from a technical error in HSBC's records, noting the claim was unpleaded, unsupported by evidence, and had been raised for the first time at trial.
"If the Defendant wished to rely on an error in HSBC's banking records, she ought to have pleaded this material fact and adduced supporting evidence," the judgment stated.
Tay found that the defendant had acted fraudulently, not merely negligently.
"A finding of negligence would be wholly inappropriate in light of the Defendant's patent awareness that she was, to put it plainly, lying to the Claimant," the judgment read.
Her defences, including work stress, employer assumption of risk, and contributory negligence, were each rejected as legally inapplicable to a breach of contract claim.
Damages of $119,490.14 were awarded, representing the interest the claimant would have earned at 3.42% per annum over five months, less interest earned after the belated placement of funds in May 2024.
