Vignish Vijelal, a former director of a shipbuilding company of Indian origin, has been sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding a financing firm of over SGD 1.3 million in 2016, as reported by the Straits Times.
The 36-year-old Vijelal was convicted on Monday for multiple instances of cheating Capital March Platform (CMP), an invoice financing platform, in 2016 through factoring agreements, using ten fraudulent invoices. At the time of the offenses, Vijelal and his father were directors at Lal Marine and Construction (LMC).
Each of the ten invoices was accompanied by a work order between LMC and offshore structure builder Keppel FELS, despite there being no contract between the two companies for the stated works. In reality, there was a genuine work order between LMC’s sister company, Lal Offshore Marine (LOM), and Keppel FELS.
District Judge Marvin Bay had previously found Vijelal guilty of 10 counts of cheating after a trial. Before handing down the sentence on Monday, the judge noted that Vijelal had claimed to have made repayments totaling more than SGD 400,000, resulting in a net loss by CMP of over SGD 950,000.
“In sentencing for financial and commercial crimes, the quantum of loss is often considered a measure of the harm caused by the criminal activity,” the report quoted the judge as saying.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Suhas Malhotra explained that factoring is a process in which a company obtains a loan by assigning a debt owed to the company itself.
Viejlal intends to appeal, and his bail has been set at SGD110,000. For each count of cheating, an offender can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
