Singapore - Four foreign banks are suing Asia-Pacific Breweries (APB) to recover 73-million-US dollars in a high-stakes legal battle, news reports said Monday. The Singapore High Court is scheduled to hear how convicted swindler Chia Tech Leng hoodwinked the banks between 1999 and 2003 to finance his high-rolling gambling habit.
The banks plan to contend that Chia's acts were carried out in his capacity as APB's finance manager, and that the company is bound by the terms of the loans to repay the money, The Straits Times said.
The hearing starting Monday has been set for 44 days.
The four banks are Germany's Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank (HVB, the North-European Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB), and two Japanese banks, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and The Fuji Bank, now known as Mizuho Corporate Bank.
Chia, 47, has served three years of a 42-year jail term. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to forgery and cheating.
As finance manager, he submitted to the banks' fictitious documents with forged signatures of top APB executives, the report said. He then became the sole signatory to a personal slush fund, which he tapped for his trips to casinos worldwide.
HVB claims APB was negligent in failing to conduct background checks on Chia when he was hired in 1998 that could have revealed he had accumulated 1 million Singapore dollars (666,000 US dollars) in gambling debts even before joining the company.
The German bank also maintains in court documents that APB was negligent by not detecting that Chia had also been dipping into APB's bank accounts.
