Goldrich Venture Pte Ltd and another v Halcyon Offshore Pte Ltd
Judge | Steven Chong J |
Judgment Date | 21 April 2015 |
Neutral Citation | [2015] SGHC 103 |
Hearing Date | 14 January 2015,09 January 2015,06 February 2015,08 January 2015,13 January 2015 |
Citation | [2015] SGHC 103 |
Year | 2015 |
Docket Number | Suit No 452 of 2012/W |
Published date | 22 April 2015 |
Subject Matter | Fraudulent,Contract,Misrepresentation |
Defendant Counsel | Chan Kah Keen Melvin, Tan Pei Qian Rachel and Tan Tho Eng (Chen Daorong) (TSMP Law Corporation) |
Plaintiff Counsel | Sim Chong (Instructed), Glenn Knight Jeyasingam and Susan Jacob (Glenn Knight) |
Court | High Court (Singapore) |
This suit concerns several alleged representations made between February 2008 and October 2008 by one Choo Swee Leng Michael (“Mr Choo”), who was purportedly an agent of the defendant at the material time, to one Lee Chiang Theng (“Mr Lee”), who was the promoter of the two plaintiff-companies. According to the plaintiffs, Mr Choo had represented that, upon the payment of a service fee to the defendant, each of the foreign workers recruited by the plaintiffs would be deployed to work at the defendant’s shipyard. At the material time, the defendant was registered as a “sponsoring shipyard”. The plaintiffs assert that, in reliance on these representations, they became the defendant’s “resident contractors”, recruited some 618 foreign workers to work in the defendant’s shipyard, and paid service fees totalling more than $2m (the bulk of which was allegedly paid in cash) to the defendant. The designation of the plaintiffs as resident contractors and the defendant’s status as their sponsoring shipyard are central to this suit and will be elaborated below.
Throughout the duration of their stay,
This unsatisfactory state of affairs came to the notice of the Ministry of Manpower (“MOM”) when 60 of these foreign workers assembled at the MOM to seek redress. Ironically, it appears that it was Mr Lee, the sole registered director of the plaintiffs, who made the transport arrangements that allowed the foreign workers to proceed to the MOM. Investigations revealed that the foreign workers were housed in unacceptable accommodation. In 2010, Mr Lee was prosecuted and convicted for failing to provide acceptable accommodation and for failing to pay the salaries of the foreign workers on time. He was sentenced to four weeks’ imprisonment and a fine of $36,000
On 31 May 2012, the plaintiffs commenced the present suit claiming an aggregate sum of $4,985,212.
I begin first with the facts.
Background Parties The first plaintiff, Goldrich Venture Pte Ltd (“Goldrich”), was incorporated on 3 November 2007 as “P.A. San Venture Pte Ltd”.
The second plaintiff, Gates Offshore Pte Ltd (“Gates”), was incorporated on 21 May 2008.
The defendant, Halcyon Offshore Pte Ltd (“Halcyon”), was incorporated on 10 May 2007.
Lying at the heart of this suit is the MOM’s policy as regards the allocation of work permits in the marine industry, which I will refer to as the “Marine Industry Sponsorship Scheme”. At the outset of the trial, the defendant indicated its intention to adduce oral evidence on this through an officer from MOM and filed Summons No 5709 of 2014 seeking leave to dispense with the preparation of an affidavit of evidence-in-chief in respect of the MOM officer. I granted leave subject to the condition that the defendant provide the plaintiffs with a list of the questions to be posed to the MOM officer. However, on the fourth day of the trial, the defendant decided that it no longer intended to call the MOM officer.
The witnesses for both parties gave evidence as to the nature and scope of the Marine Industry Sponsorship Scheme at the material time, which was also an issue that was argued before V K Rajah JA in MA 344/2010. Save for one important point (which I will flag later), the parties are
… the MOM divided the marine companies in Singapore into two broad groups,
viz , (a) shipyards and (b) contractors. These groups were further sub-divided into: (a) Sponsoring Shipyards and non-sponsoring shipyards and (b) Resident Contractors and common contractors. The work permit requirements and controls for foreign worker allocation would vary depending on which group the company fell into. The MOM had a pooled quota system which allowed a Sponsoring Shipyard to combine with Resident Contractors in the hiring of foreign work permit holders. From the perspective of the Sponsoring Shipyard, the benefits of this system are first, that the number of local workers for the Sponsoring Shipyard is consolidated and the number of foreign work permits allowed is a percentage of this combined figure, and second, that no further proof of contracts is required before the MOM issues the work permits. This allowed the Sponsoring Shipyard and its respective Resident Contractors great flexibility in using the same pool of foreign work permit holders for different projects with a fast turn-around time. The Resident Contractor can only be registered with one Sponsoring Shipyard and its foreign workers can only be deployed to that Sponsoring Shipyard. …
The reference to a “pooled quota system” requires some elaboration. The MOM limited the total number of foreign workers that a company could hire. This limit was calculated with reference to the number of local workers that the entity had in its workforce. The ratio of local to foreign workers was known as the “dependency ratio” and it was expressed as a percentage which, at that time, was 83.3% (
Sometime in 2007, the defendant acquired a shipyard located at Pandan Crescent.
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