Bangkok: Singapore's squeaky clean image has taken a battering as the city-state's leaders come to grips with its largest ever corruption scandal that engulfed oil rig builder Keppel Offshore and Marine.
Senior Minister for State Finance and Law Indranee Rajah insists the company, a unit of the government-linked conglomerate Keppel Corporation, has not got off "lightly" by agreeing to pay a $US422 million ($536 million) fine to avoid a criminal trial in the US for bribing Brazilian officials.
"As far as the company is concerned, make no mistake, there has been a heavy price to pay, and deservedly so," Indranee told Singapore's Parliament in the first comments on the scandal by a government leader.
Singapore has been known for years as the least corrupt nation in Asia and last year moved up a notch to be ranked the world's seventh least corrupt nation by Transparency International.
But Indranee admitted in Parliament the Keppel scandal had hurt country's reputation and that the government was "extremely disappointed as well in what has occurred."
With global-wide businesses spanning property, infrastructure and asset management, and employing more than 30,000 people, Keppel Corporation is 20 per cent owned by the Singapore government.
The fine paid by Keppel Offshore and Marine is one of the biggest ever paid under the US Corrupt Practices Act.
The US Justice Department found that between 2001 and 2014 executives of Keppel Offshore and Marine paid $US55 million in bribes to officials of Petrobras - Brazil's state-owned oil company - over 13 contracts to build a fleet of oil rigs.
Investigators said Brazil's then ruling Worker's Party had used its influence to hire Petrobras officials who in turn collected bribes and shared the money with politicians and party leaders.
The Worker's Party denies the money was spent on political campaigns. The corruption scandal, stemming from the investigation known as Operation Car Wash, also involves other global conglomerates in several continents.
The Keppel scandal followed another at the state-linked shipbuilder Singapore Technologies Marine where seven executives have been jailed for falsely claiming millions of dollars in expenses in return for ship repair contracts.
Singapore was also rocked last year by a bitter feud in the family of its late founder Lee Kuan Yew.
Two of Lee's three children accused their brother, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, of abusing power to try to save the family's house as a historic monument, in defiance of their father's wishes.
The Prime Minister denied the claim.
Singapore opposition Worker's Party MP Sylvia Lim asked in Parliament about public concern over "what is perceived to be lenient treatment" given to Keppel Offshore and Marine.
Indranee replied that the fine paid by the company was eight times more than could have been imposed under Singapore's Prevention of Corruption Act.
She said "certain individuals" are still under investigation but did not name them.
"Nobody has got off - or not got off as the case may be," she said.
Indranee said Singapore will not condone corruption by Singaporeans or Singapore companies overseas.
"They cannot lower their own standards of integrity and they must not bring back to Singapore practices alien to the norms which we have established with such great effort here," she said.
And Reuters reports that on Tuesday Singaporean authorities charged 11 men over the alleged theft of more than 2000 tonnes of oil valued at more than $1 million from Royal Dutch Shell's biggest refinery in the country.
Authorities also seized more than $2 million cash and a 12,000-deadweight oil tanker named Prime South which has been shipping fuel between Vietnam and Singapore for the past 30 days.
Shell, which first reported the theft to authorities in August, said in a news release the arrests included a "limited number of Shell employees".
