Her defence: placing the deposit was never in her job description
An accountant must pay her employer $119,490 after District Judge Tay Jingxi found on 17 July 2026 she never invested the company's $8.5 million.
The employee worked in the finance department of a Singapore company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of a mainboard-listed group, from March 2022 to April 2024. From March 2023 she was assigned to place the company's funds in fixed deposits. Between December 2023 and May 2024 she never placed roughly $8.5 million in a deposit, and the company only found out after she resigned, when a bank called to ask whether it still wished to proceed.
Her central defence was that placing fixed deposits never fell within her contractual duties, which she said were captured exclusively in a job description sent to her before her interview. The court disagreed. It found the job description was only a reference document and never formed part of her employment contract. The duty still bound her, the judge held, because her supervisor had instructed her to take over the work in 2023 and the employee handbook required her to obey lawful and reasonable instructions.
Clause 6.1 of that handbook prohibited employees from "refusing to carry out lawful and reasonable instructions", among other conduct. The court found the employee had conceded those instructions were lawful and reasonable and had in fact taken over and performed the work. By not placing the money, the judge found, she breached both the handbook and a clause of her offer letter requiring her to faithfully and diligently perform her duties.
The court also found the employee had prepared financial summaries and reconciliation statements telling senior management the money sat in a five-month deposit when it did not. After her superior flagged a discrepancy, the court found, she altered a bank statement to show a balance of $8,950 in place of a true balance of more than $8.5 million.
Examining the altered document, the judge noted a mismatched font and a misaligned figure consistent with manual editing, and found the employee was its source. Her account that she had simply come across the statement in a shared folder, the judge held, "is so implausible as to be untrue".
The court found she had acted dishonestly rather than merely negligently, breaching the handbook's prohibition on fraud and dishonesty involving company property.
Several defences failed. The court rejected arguments that the employee was under stress, that the employer had assumed the risk of assigning work she felt unequipped for, and that the employer had contributed to any negligence. It also declined to consider a late claim that senior management never instructed her to make the placement, finding it had not been pleaded.
On damages, the court put the interest the company lost at about $122,000, subtracted about $2,700 it later earned on a replacement deposit, and arrived at $119,490. The judge noted the company could have claimed a higher rate but sought a lower one, and allowed the claim in full.
The judgment makes clear that duties assigned to an employee through a supervisor's lawful and reasonable instructions can become contractually binding even when they appear nowhere in that employee's job description.
