Brunei’s Attorney-General’s Chambers has engaged Senior Counsel Hri Kumar Nair from Singapore to help with a complex corruption case that involves a Malaysian mastermind, officials from Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) and more than B$5 million (S$5 million) overall.
Mr Nair led a team from Drew & Napier, including Mr Navin S. Thevar and Mr Edwin Soh, in the case against Sabeli Ismail, 56, a senior official with BSP who had worked for the company for more than 34 years.
The law firm’s chief executive, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, had acted on behalf of Brunei’s Attorney-General in August in a related trial.
The case was “part and parcel” of continuing efforts to weed out corrupt elements and practices in BSP, noted the presiding judge.
Last October, Sabeli pleaded guilty to six graft charges, with an additional five taken into consideration, all of which occurred in 2008.
He had created work orders for the purchase of various items from Musfada Enterprise for which he received B$30,250 (S$30,250) in total and caused B$51,200 loss to BSP.
Five charges, related to him pocketing another B$21,500, were taken into account.
He was convicted and jailed for four years concurrently on each charge last month, fined B$30,250 and ordered to pay B$50,000 in costs.
In judgment grounds last month, Brunei’s chief magistrate Muhammed Faisal Pehin Dato Kefli underlined “the importance of the oil and gas industry to Brunei’s economy and the status of BSP as a public body within that industry”.
BSP accounted for more than half of Brunei’s gross domestic product and 90 per cent of its total export earnings, a court had heard in an earlier related case.
Sabeli is the second of eight suspects to be convicted in the complex large-scale graft case being probed by the authorities in Brunei since 2009.
Mr Singh had, last August, prosecuted former BSP employee Aidah Tengah, 44.
She was jailed for three years on appeal for corruptly receiving bribes totalling B$200,200 from David Chong, the manager of Musfada Enterprise, a key BSP contractor.
Musfada supplied items such as oil spill kits, box pallets and safety equipment.
Chong, a Malaysian who orchestrated the bribes paid between 2007 and 2009, was sentenced to six years’ jail in 2013 for his role.
Legal practitioners said the engagement of lawyers from a top Singapore law firm suggested the premium placed on the case by the Brunei government.
Said Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore president Sunil Sudheesan: “We should be honoured that Brunei has chosen one of Singapore’s leading private-sector lawyers to prosecute an important case there.
“It is no surprise as Brunei had engaged Mr Singh before and Mr Nair is one of his most esteemed colleagues.”
vijayan@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on Jan 03, 2017.
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