OW Bunker Chairman: Board Did Not Approve Tankoil Credit

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Friday November 21, 2014

OW Bunker A/S Chairman Niels Henrik Jensen Thursday said the board had not approved a large line of credit responsible for a large loss at one of its Singapore subsidiaries and had been "extremely surprised" to learn of another large hedging loss elsewhere, Reuters reports.

OW Bunker filed for bankruptcy on November 7 after the announcement of the two losses.

"It remains unclear to the board how this could happen and the board is looking very much forward to an in-depth investigation into the course of events," said Jensen.

A line of credit of around $125 million was reportedly extended to Tankoil Marine Services by OW Bunker's Singaporean subsidiary Dynamic Oil Trading (DOT), a move which the board has labelled fraudulent.

But this line of ultimately unrecovered credit was never submitted to the board, and certainly was not authorised by it, according to Jensen, who added that no credit above $10 million had been authorised for use by DOT.

OW Bunker announced at the same time as this alleged fraud that a loss from hedging activities was much larger than previously reported, amounting to around $150 million.

Separately, Arvid Andersen, the lawyer for DOT CEO Lars Møller who is said to be behind the line of credit, has said the management of OW Bunker must have known what was going on.

Ship & Bunker News Team
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