Jia Changbin has been ordered to resign from his post as general
manager of the China Aviation Oil Holding Company (CAOHC) for his
involvement in a scandal concerning the Singapore Exchange. He was
found guilty by a Singaporean court in 2004.
The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission
on Tuesday announced Jia's successor as head of the heavyweight jet
fuel supplier as Sun Li, former chief of the chemical and marketing
business of the China National Petroleum Corporation.
Jia and his former deputy Chen Jiulin, who was also chief
executive of CAOHC subsidiary China Aviation Oil (Singapore), were
found to have failed to inform the Singapore Exchange of its
massive losses of US$550 million from oil derivative trading.
Chen was sentenced to four years and three months in jail and
fined 335,000 Singapore dollars (about US$207,443). He's currently
serving his sentence in Singapore. Jia escaped imprisonment but was
fined 400,000 yuan (around US$51,282).
"We'll learn from the lesson of the Singapore incident, improve
the governance of the parent company, tighten risk assessment and
improve the company's performance," Sun told.
Despite the shadow of the Singapore affair the CAOHC still took
US$7.22 billion in revenue last year and reported profits of nearly
US$128.5 million, Sun said.
The CAO (Singapore) has been restructured and resumed trading on
the Singapore stock exchange after being suspended for 16
months.
British energy company BP and a subsidiary of Singapore's
government-related investment company, Temasek Holdings, are the
new shareholders of CAO (Singapore) but CAOHC holds the majority
share.
The news did not affect the CAO (Singapore) share price which
closed at 1.040 Singapore dollars on Wednesday. This was the same
as the previous day.
Established in October, 2002, CAOHC is one of 159
centrally-administered large state-owned enterprises.
(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2007)