All the criminal charges against the founder of collapsed oil trader ZenRock Commodities, Xie Chun, have been dropped following his death.
Xie’s four indictments were abated after a pre-trial conference on 9 January.
A spokesperson for the attorney-general’s chambers told Singapore newspaper Straits Times: “The criminal charges against Xie Chun were abated on the application of the defence after the accused passed away.
“This means the Singaporean court proceedings over his charges have come to an end,” the report published on Wednesday read.
No further details were revealed about his death.
According to a Singapore police statement on 8 July 2022, Xie was charged with cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery amounting to more than $105m.
Further investigations by Singapore authorities also revealed that between February and March 2020, Xie Chun, then aged 45, and former ZenRock operations executive Zhang Taiming, 32, had used forged documents to cheat the Bank of China (BOC) out of $54m.
Both Xie and Zhang were also accused of committing a criminal breach of trust by dishonestly reassigning to BOC the cargo oil proceeds that it had charged to HSBC (Singapore).
Both also cheated Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank out of $17m.
ZenRock was founded in 2014 by a group of veteran oil traders including Xie, who was formerly from Chinese oil trading giant Unipec.
The company was one of several high-profile traders, such as giant oil firm Hin Leong, to collapse in 2020 following a crash in oil prices during the Covid-19 pandemic, exposing hidden financial troubles and wrongdoings.
The company has occasionally chartered tankers and LPG carriers in spot trade but was not known to be a major player in any particular segment, according to brokers, TradeWinds has reported.
Clarksons data showed ZenRock was involved in the East of Suez VLGC trade in December 2019 and January 2020, fixing the 79,329-cbm Vega Song (built 2018) and 83,277-cbm Aquamarine Progress (built 2010) on voyage charters.
