Company puts blame on 'errant individuals'

Singapore-registered Bellagraph Nova (BN) Group said the posting of controversial marketing material "appears to be the result of the actions of certain errant individuals, possibly with malicious intent".

It added that it will be appointing independent legal counsel to investigate the controversy.

The BN Group made the news recently for its reported £280 million (S$503 million) takeover bid for Newcastle United Football Club.

Following this, the group came under scrutiny and, last weekend, admitted that some publicity photos that featured its co-founders with former US president Barack Obama had been altered.

The group's chief marketing and investor relations officer Nereides Antonio Giamundo de Bourbon admitted to Reuters that it had doctored photos of Mr Obama to make them look as if he had attended a meeting with its executives in Paris.

In reality, the photos were taken last December at a charity gala event in Singapore sponsored by Novena Global Lifecare, which was founded by Singapore businessmen Terence Loh, 42, and Nelson Loh, 40.

Other discrepancies were also spotted in their publicity material.

The two men, who are cousins, are co-founders of the BN Group, together with Chinese businesswoman Evangeline Shen, 32.

In a statement last night, the BN Group said that the bid to acquire the English Premier League club had "led to a number of queries relating to the company and marketing material that was purportedly released by the company".

It asserted that the marketing material also includes "matters in the pipeline but which have not been concluded".

It added that it will not address any further media queries until investigations have been completed.

The BN Group was formed following a merger between the Loh cousins' investment vehicle, the Dorr Group, and Ms Shen's Bellagraph Group.

It was set up on July 20 with a paid-up capital of $20 million.

Among other things, it claimed to own more than 30 entities across 100 countries in major fields including finance, sports, healthcare, luxury goods, entertainment and robotics.

It said it is based in Paris and worth an estimated US$12 billion (S$16 billion).

Besides the doctored photos, other inconsistencies that surfaced in the group's publicity material and social media posts include a statement that it operates more than 10,000 private jets.

When pressed about the Reuters report last Saturday, Mr de Bourbon told The Sunday Times in an e-mail - which was copied to the co-founders and their lawyers - that the report was "factually unreal".

However, he did not respond specifically to ST's queries about the group's revenue streams, its 23,000 employees, and its addresses in Singapore and Paris.

Reuters had reported that no company named Bellagraph Nova Group is registered in France.

Publicity material for the BN Group also describes the Dorr Group as having over US$4 billion in assets.

Ms Shen's Bellagraph Group includes Bellagraph Jewelry, and a press statement in June said it is "most notably famed for holding the world record for highest ever online single sale transaction of US$102 million (across all product categories globally)".

Earlier yesterday, the group retracted several press releases related to its business.

These had been distributed by PR Newswire in the past two months.

One of them, issued on July 10, was titled "Welcome To NETX - global conglomerate Bellagraph Nova Group launches latest technolgy (sic) platform focusing on AI + robotics + healthcare".

It said then that NETX "was born" as a result of a "historic" closed-door meeting that its co-founders had with Mr Obama last December.

Another one, titled "The new social technology revolution - panel discussion with Bellagraph Nova Group founders and Barack Obama on their ambitious quest to seize the opportunity of a lifetime in the post pandemic world", issued on July 13, was also retracted.

This release said that "through one of the BN Group's entities, Bellagraph Jewelry's client relationship management, the King of Saudi Arabia, the King of Qatar, and Queen Mother of Qatar have expressed their interest on investment opportunities and collaborations".

It added: "Through our extensive work with the Obama Foundation charitable initiatives as well as ongoing effort to promote human rights, we have attracted several global companies such as the likes of Citibank, JP Morgan, and other established Global Fortune 500 companies to partner with the BN Group."

A third, on an unrelated topic, titled "Bellagraph Jewelry launches world's first male luxury jewellery line tailored for power", issued on Aug 10, was similarly withdrawn.

In that release, BN Group claimed that Mr Obama "was seen personally donning one among Bellagraph Jewellery's unique signature 'La Rose' Lapel items that's set in uncommon coloured gem stones".

BN Group said in a note published on PR Newswire that journalists and other readers "should disregard" those releases.