Saturday, March 20, 2010

Director fined for lodging false data

Who did it? CSI team, pls check for finger prints and DNA.

Dear Staff of Corporate Secretarial firms, directors-wannabes and of course, Directors of companies,

Please be informed that a local director was recently fined $21,000 for changing the addresses of foreign directors to a local address, with full knowledge that the information is false.

Why did she, Ragini Dhanvantray of Rivkin Consultancy, do that for?
She is currently the local director of companies with foreign directors.
The Companies Act stipulates that every company must have at least one director ordinarily resident in Singapore.
Perhaps (I speculate here, without basis) she is thinking of quitting as local director of these companies as these foreign directors/shareholders may have gone missing and have not be meeting their obligations to her and the companies.
She came up with the idea of changing the addresses of these foreign directors and subsequently follow with her resignation as director.

Points to ponder
  1. How were these false information found out?
  2. As the Companies Act is currently under review, should the relevant authority/committee consider possible improvement to the stipulation for a local director and specify the roles and responsibilities of these directors? Less will come forward to offer themselves as local directors if these directors are constantly hauled to Court, ACRA, IRAS, creditors, customers, employees etc etc to answer queries on companies abandoned by these foreign shareholders cum directors. If less are willing to come forward, what are implications to Singapore as a business hub?
We were repeatedly reminded that you have no lesser responsibilities as a local director or a nominee director. A director is a director! Oxymoronic?

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