SINGAPORE: Shipping executive Teo Siong Seng is among seven executives of shipping container manufacturing companies that have been accused by the United States of conspiring to restrict the output and fix the prices of dry containers.
The price-fixing of nearly all the world’s standard dry – or unrefrigerated – containers went on for over four years, spanning as early as November 2019 to at least January 2024, the US Justice Department said in a press release on Tuesday (May 19).
“The multi-year conspiracy roughly doubled the prices of standard shipping containers between 2019 and 2021, increasing the container manufacturers’ profits approximately one hundredfold during the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain crisis,” it said.
Mr Teo is employed by Singamas Container Holdings as its CEO and chairman, a publicly traded company in Hong Kong. Singamas is a listed subsidiary of Pacific International Lines, of which Mr Teo is executive chairman.
Mr Teo is also the chairman of the Singapore Business Federation (SBF). As SBF chairman, he is part of the Singapore Economic Resilience Taskforce.
He is one of six executive co-defendants linked to Singamas’ marketing director Vick Nam Hing Ma, who was arrested in France on Apr 14. His extradition to the US is pending.
Following Ma’s arrest, the executives and the companies they worked at were charged for conspiring to restrict the output of – and fix the price of – nearly all the world’s dry containers.
“The intermodal containers … carry billions of dollars of goods across the oceans to American households each year,” said the Justice Department.
Mr Teo, along with five other co-defendants, is currently at large, according to the Justice Department.
SINGAMAS ENGAGES LEGAL ADVISERS
In a filing on the Hong Kong exchange on Wednesday, Singamas said neither the company nor Mr Teo had been served with “any legal process or other legal documentation” by the US Justice Department.
It added that it has engaged external legal advisers. In the meantime, all business operations and day-to-day activities will remain normal.
Singamas also requested a one-day trading halt from Wednesday afternoon to 9am on Thursday.
CIMC said on Wednesday that it “attaches great importance to the matter and will closely monitor and respond proactively”.
The company said that it had not yet been served any legal documentation by the US Justice Department.