On January 9, Eleven men were reportedly charged in connection with carrying out a large scale oil heist at Shell’s biggest refinery.
What happened?
The Singapore court found eleven men guilty of carrying out oil theft at Shell’s biggest refinery. The men were reportedly apprehended by police, after a weekend raid was conducted and a total of seventeen men were apprehended. The police also seized millions of dollars in cash and a small tanker during their investigations into theft at the Pulau Bukom industrial site, which sits just south of Singapore’s main island.
Singapore’s lifeline:
Oil refining and shipping has proved to be Singapore’s lifeline and has considerably raised its wealth in the past decades but it has evolved as major hotspot for illegal oil trading.
In a new released by the police, the investigation began after Shell contacted the authorities in August 2017, after “extensive investigations and probes,” the Criminal Investigation Department, Police Intelligence Department and Police Coast Guard launched a series of simultaneous raids across Singapore, which led to subsequent arrests.
Employees arrested:
Out of the nine people who were arrested, eight were found to be employees of the Singapore subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, court documents showed.
Furthermore, two Vietnamese nationals were charged with receiving stolen goods on a small tanker named ‘Prime South’.
Shell confirmed that eight of the 11 men charged were current or former employees at Shell Eastern Petroleum (Pte) Ltd.
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Source: Reuters
