News about a stink

WHICH is more important to you? News about a bakery, bankers, or body scanners?

Now, don’t raise a stink just because we’re going with a bakery first. That’s because it’s not just another bakery, but the one in Goodwood Park Hotel which is famous for its durian puffs. Those durian pastries are infamous for causing 76 people to suffer from food poisoning. The G has swept in to suspend the hotel’s baking licence but it hasn’t been able to pinpoint the source of infection beyond saying it had to do with food handling lapses. Premises were clean when it checked, and there were no rats or cockroaches scurrying around. Its supplier’s durian pulp is okay too, since other establishments which use the pulp aren’t affected.

That’s interesting isn’t it? You didn’t know the durian pulp was mass produced? You thought it was lovingly scraped from the seed by hand and then mashed? And no, we don’t know who the supplier is if you’re thinking of making the durian puffs yourself while the suspension is on. There’s no word on when the ban will be lifted.

If food handling was bad in Goodwood Park Hotel, there will at least be less body handling at Changi Airport Terminal 3. The airport is testing out ways to screen you – and your baggage – which won’t involve body pat-downs or having to take out your computer from your hand-carry luggage for inspection. It’s going to be a quicker check-in,  with more privacy for the traveller. Let’s hope that the screening devices will be advanced enough to detect any suspicious items on your person or baggage even more meticulously.

Now we’ll move to bankers and brokerages, because something stinks in the financial industry. White collar crime busters have raided four brokerages because of suspected breaches of the Securities and Futures Act. A few remisiers were taken away for questioning. Remisiers are self-employed people who pay to use brokerage facilities for a fee. This could be why one of the four, DBS Vickers, could confidently say, according to TODAY:  “Based on facts currently available to us, we believe that DBS Vickers is not under investigation.” The other three brokerages are Maybank Kim Eng, OCBC Securities, and Phillip Securities. They’re keeping mum. It seems that in the first three months of the year, Singapore Stock Exchange reported three cases of insider trading and six cases of market manipulation to the authorities. It’s not clear if these are linked to the raids.

While everybody is anonymous in the brokerages’ saga, a Mr Yeo Jiawei, 33, formerly with Swiss private bank BSI, has been charged in court with money laundering. This has to do with $200,000 in his Bank of China account discovered while the authorities here were investigating the private bank’s links with Malaysia’s 1MDB fund. He denied wrongdoing, and his request for access to counsel has been denied. He’s the first to be charged but not the first banker to come under a cloud. In February, court documents showed that a senior colleague, Mr Yak Yew Chee, was also being investigated for handling accounts for 1MDB and related entities. He too has denied wrong-doing.

PS. We have our own reports on what happened on the second day of public hearings into the Elected Presidency system coming out in a while.

 

Featured image from TMG file. 

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