Editor: The article below has been edited at 8pm (Singapore time) on 25 July to reflect the change in the next hearing date.
The accuracy of revised bunker data provided by BP to the State Courts of Singapore as evidence against former BP Singapore Regional Marine Manager Clarence Chang and Koh Seng Lee, the sole shareholder and executive director of Pacific Prime Trading (PPT) was a key topic of discussion on Wednesday morning’s session.
James Ong, Regional Security Adviser (Asia Pacific) at BP, took the stand to present a new set of data compiled by the oil major to aid in the court process; he claimed the new data unfilters earlier information earlier withheld by BP lawyers.
However, the printout of the new set of data omitted certain information found within the original document with data pertaining to BP bunker sales figures leading Chelva Retnam Rajah, Partner of Tan Rajah & Cheah, who represents Koh to probe further.
A key point was certain summations and a missing ‘barge’ column from the original files dating October 2008 which was omitted from the new documents being presented to court.
“Sorry, what you mean that sometimes the printout may not reflect from the source? Mr Ong, my question to you is what do you mean when you say that sometimes information from the source document is sometimes not printed out?” Rajah asked.
“It’s printing […],” replied Ong.
“What you mean it’s printing? You say there is an error in your printer, are you suggesting this?” Rajah questioned.
“When you print out from the excel file into PDF you need to drag and select; for the October 2008 printout I will not rule out I missed the selection of the column barge for the printout,” said Ong.
“So it may have been human error on your part?” Rajah further asked.
“Yes, thank you for that,” Ong confirmed.
Andre Maniam, Senior Counsel at WongPartnership, presenting Chang asked why the new document, which took into account BP’s bunker sales volumes at Singapore, omitted sales of marine gas oil (MGO).
“Mr Ong my understanding is MGO is one category of bunker fuel so if we want to understand the total delivered volume of bunker fuel for Singapore we should filter out all the none Singapore ports but we should leave in MGO together with all the grades of fuel oil right?” Questioned Maniam.
Ong replied, “Yes.”
“Why did you filter out?” Maniam asked.
“I was under direction by my legal [to do so],” said Ong.
The trial continues 26 July August 7.
Related: BP Singapore bunker bribery case update: CPIB officer takes to the stand
Related: UPDATE: BP Singapore bunker bribery case
Related: BP Singapore bunker bribery case continues
Photo credit: Chensiyuan / CC BY-SA 4.0
Published: 25 July, 2018
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