THREE former executives of listed JEL Corporation (Holdings) and its financial controller were hauled to court on Wednesday to face multiple criminal charges arising from an 18-month probe into manipulated accounts.

JEL is a distributor of consumer goods, electronics and telecommunication products and distribution networks spanning many emerging and developing countries.

Its former chief executive officer and executive chairman Eric Tan Boon Yong, 51, ex-deputy CEO Wee Teck Han, 36, and group financial controller Alex Ng Soon Heng, 32, are said to have inflated the company's profit by overstating accounts by $6.4 million for the year 2006.

For the half-year ended June 30, 2007, they allegedly overstated the figures by $785,423.

The fourth, former chief operating officer and director Eric Leow Hock Leong 53, was charged with seven counts under the Securities and Futures Act.

Tan, who has 94 charges in all, is alleged on 68 occasions to have conspired with Wee and Ng to falsify company papers by inflating tax invoices between November 2006 and June 2007.

He allegedly failed on six occasions to notify Singapore Exchange (SGX) of transactions of interested parties in 2006 and 2007.

Tan is also said to have failed to state his directorship in Biomed Holdings, a BVI-incorporated company, between 2001 and 2002 in the JEL's prospectus on Aug 12, 2003.

Seventeen other charges accuse him of taking loans of $1.48 million from the company between February 2006 and April 2007. These have since been repaid. Wee, now self-employed, has a total of 72 charges while Ng faces 70 counts.

All are out on $100,000 bail. Their passports were impounded. Except for Leow, who was unrepresented and intends to engage a lawyer in a week's time, the rest will go for a pre-trial conference on July 2.