Societe Generale’s (SocGen) heads of trade and commodities finance for Asia Pacific are reported to have left the company.
The Paris-based bank confirmed on Thursday that Damien de Rosny and Timothy Siow had left the bank’s Singapore office, without providing further details, reported Reuters.
Their exit comes as the bank wages a court battle over more than $90m it claims it lost in a credit scam on a series of “alleged sham bunkering transactions”.
However, there have been no reports that their departure is in anyway linked to the legal case first reported by TradeWinds earlier this month.
Lawyers for Societe General’s Singapore branch have been chasing assets to recover their client’s cash in the courts of London, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The credit was issued to Singapore-based Inter-Pacific Petroleum (IPP) and allegedly paid over to a series of other parties.
IPP has been under judicial administration in Singapore since August, making the recovery of funds complicated.
The departure of the two executives has raised concerns among Singapore-based fuel traders that it may wind back financing services to the sector.
The bank, however, said it remained active in natural resources financing, one of its core areas of expertise.
“Societe Generale remains committed to trade commodities finance at the global level and in Asia,” the bank said in an email to Reuters.
In 2017, SocGen also incurred losses after one of Singapore’s largest ship fuel traders, Universal Energy, was stripped of its operating license due to alleged operational malpractice.
Singapore is the world’s largest bunkering hub, supplying nearly 50 million tonnes of marine fuels in 2018, worth over $20bn in revenues.
