OW Bunker Collapse Could Still Result in Criminal Charges as SØIK's Fraud Investigation Continues

SØIK says the investigation in OW Bunker's demise has been given high priority and has been underway from a very early stage.

Last year's collapse of OW Bunker could still result in criminal charges, and Morten Jakobsen, state prosecutor for Denmark's Serious Economic and International Crime (SØIK), has confirmed that he has had a major investigation into the OW Bunker bankruptcy underway since the end of 2014, Danish news outlet DR reports.

Although he would not say which aspects of the bankruptcy SØIK is particularly interested in, Jakobsen says the investigation has been given high priority and has been in progress from a very early stage.

SØIK will reportedly not elaborate on how many investigators associated with the case.

DR reports that a variety of lawyers with "special insight" into the matter say that it will be obvious to investigators whether OW Bunkers management and its advisors had breached their obligation to inform the stock market on price-sensitive matters.

The lawyers are said to have pointed specifically to series of meetings in October of 2014, saying that the contents of those meetings' transcripts should have been made public, noting it would have affected the price of OW Bunker's shares.

The October meetings, reportedly code named "Red October", are said to have been held to discuss the company's "life-threatening" situation.

The report also noted that at the time of OW Bunker's collapse, management said it had reported two key employees from its Singapore subsidiary Dynamic Oil Trading to police over an alleged $150 million fraud.

However, according to DR, management did not complete the police report before the company went bankrupt.

In December, a group of OW Bunker investors announced they were launching their own investigation into the collapse of the company.