SINGAPORE: The former managing director of a luxury jet firm was charged in court on Wednesday (Oct 12) with embezzling more than S$11 million.
Cassidy Geoffery Owen, 34, was handed 34 charges including criminal breach of trust by misappropriation, abetting the forgery of invoices and instigating others to falsely record that he had made payments to firms.
According to a police statement, Cassidy was the managing director of aircraft rental and charter company Zetta Jet between 2015 and 2017. He was also a director in aircraft management and consulting company Asia Aviation Company between 2009 and 2017.
He is also accused of using more than S$1.4 million of the embezzled funds for property-related expenditures, and of cheating a company into delivering more than US$400,000 to Asia Aviation on five occasions between 2014 and 2015.
The offences in the charges date back as early as 2014. Cassidy, an Australian, is accused of dishonestly misappropriating US$2.67 million in September 2016 while he was a director of Zetta Jet in Singapore.
His other charge sheets refer to large sums of money, including an accusation of abetting Zetta Jet’s finance manager in June 2017 to post a false journal entry of US$1.35 million. The entry stated that Owen had paid that amount to a consulting firm on Zetta Jet’s behalf.
He is also accused of using criminal proceeds for his own use, such as in December 2016, when he allegedly used S$1.2 million that was in a shared bank account.
A 46-year-old woman, June Tang Kim Choo, was also charged on Wednesday in relation to the case. She was a director of Zetta Jet between 2015 and 2017 and allegedly failed to use reasonable diligence in her duties by authorising payments of more than S$5 million without checking if they were for the company’s purposes.
Cassidy was offered bail of S$300,000 and will return to court next month.