SINGAPORE, December 29: "Biscuit King" Rajan Pillai may be no more, but the controversy which had enveloped him until his death in custody in Delhi over two years ago, has been given a new lease of life in Singapore. The local authorities nabbed one of his former associates, Antony Joseph, at Changi Airport on Friday. And on Saturday, a district court here charged him with 22 counts of criminal breach of trust.The defendant who was a company secretary with Britannia Industries, faces a jail term of 10 years or even life imprisonment on each charge.
A bail of S $ (Singapore dollar) 2 million has been set by the court, greatly exceeding the S$3 lakh sought by defence counsel Prabhakaran Nair. A court hearing has been fixed for January 8.
Most of the charges levelled against Joseph are similar to those Rajan Pillai faced, relating to misuse of company funds. The former company secretary is charged with siphoning US $ 4.2 million from the company coffers to pay off the debts of Paragon Corporation in the
Virgin Islands, in which the late Pillai had a stake, and of the Singapore-based Shasta Industries, which was fully owned by Pillai and his wife, Nina.
The 43-year-old Joseph, a Chartered Accountant, who enjoys permanent resident status in the city state, was arrested on his arrival from India, where he had supposedly sought refuge from the Singapore police. A warrant had been issued for his arrest in March 1995, when he fled the country, presumably to evade a court hearing in connection with the Rajan Pillai case.
Joseph, a prosecution witness in Pillai's trial, was to have clarified to the court whether he had acted under Pillai's direction when makingentries in the accounts. Britannia Industries was jointly owned by Pillai and former RJR-Nabisco chairman Ross Johnson and his associates. The re-opening of the Rajan Pillai case, which had been declared closed in May 1995, has taken observers by surprise.
The denouement of the case, which involved one of Singapore's longest commercial crime trials,
lasting nine months from August 15, 1994, came five-and-a-half months after the 47-year-old tycoon's death in the Deen Dayal Hospital in New Delhi while in custody in Tihar jail. District judge Jasvender Kaur had closed the file following an application by the deputy public prosecutor.
Pillai fled Singapore in April 1995, while awaiting the sentence on his conviction of 23 counts of criminal breach of trust, one count of cheating and two counts under the Companies Act. Three other charges, one under the Companies Act and two under the Penal Code, had been stood down.
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
