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SINGAPORE – A former employee of the oil giant Shell Eastern Petroleum admitted on Tuesday (December 15) to being involved in a conspiracy to misappropriate diesel worth approximately 36.1 million dollars (49.1 million Singapore dollars).
Sadagopan Premnath, a 40-year-old Indian citizen, pleaded guilty to four counts of conspiracy to misappropriate company diesel. Five other similar charges will be considered during his sentencing.
Sadagopan received about $ 150,000 for his involvement in the plot and has not reinstated Shell.
On Tuesday, Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Ong described the plan as “a large-scale, long-term conspiracy to misappropriate diesel from Shell’s Pulau Bukom manufacturing site.”
The court heard that the conspiracy took place during two periods between 2007 and 2018, during which diesel oil was extracted from Shell’s refinery in Pulau Bukom, the largest petrochemical production and export center in the Asia-Pacific region.
Sadagopan was involved in the scheme between 2017 and 2018.
He was employed by Shell around 2012 and his duties included manually opening or closing large valves or operating the black oil control panels that digitally controlled the movement of the valves.
His base salary was around $ 2,400 a month and $ 3,400 with shift assignments. With overtime work, he was paid about $ 4,000 a month.
He had six co-conspirators who were employees of Shell Pulau Bukom and were part of his task force.
They targeted vessels with Vietnamese and Greek captains to conduct illegal oil trade. According to one of the co-conspirators, Juandi Pungot, it was well known in the industry that such people would easily carry on the illegal oil trade.
They would approach the captains of the Vietnamese ships on an ad-hoc basis and ask them if they were interested in making illegal loads.
In mid-2017, Juandi recruited Sadagopan into the union. He agreed to join in part because he was concerned that older colleagues might treat him with hostility.
According to court documents, Sadagopan’s main function was to open or close the necessary valves using the black oil panel, as instructed by his co-conspirators.
Initially, superiors would tell him to walk away from the panel he was operating and let one of them take control.
Eventually, he controlled the panel as instructed by the highest ranking co-conspirators, who told him when to open and close the valves to avoid detection. He was often accompanied by a person of higher rank, as he was less familiar with the operation of the system.
The group was able to avoid detection for so long through several measures.
For example, they configured the flow of embezzled diesel through carefully planned routes and ensured that multiple pumps and tanks were moving at the same time, including unnecessary tank-to-tank transfers. They also transferred diesel production to the same tank from which they removed it and timed the misappropriation with legitimate diesel cargo so as not to arouse suspicion.
According to court documents, Sadagopan did not know who bought the stolen diesel.
He is scheduled to appear in court for mitigation and sentencing on February 18 of next year.
For each count of criminal breach of trust, an offender can be imprisoned for up to 15 years and fined.
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