21 years’ jail for ex-Shell employee who played leading role in $100m fuel heist
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Richard Goh leaving the State Courts in 2021. The Malaysian pleaded guilty to 24 charges in relation to his involvement in a conspiracy to siphon $100 million worth of marine gas oil between August 2014 and January 2018.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
- Richard Goh, ex-Shell employee, received 21 years' jail for his role in a $100 million fuel siphoning scheme at Pulau Bukom, admitting to receiving $1.5 million in criminal benefits.
- Goh recruited members, planned oil theft, and bribed surveyors. The scheme, active from 2014 to 2018, involved bypassing meters and tampering with equipment to steal gas oil.
- Eleven others, including masterminds Abdul Latif Ibrahim (25 years, two months) and Juandi Pungot (29 years), were jailed. Shell detected losses in 2015, leading to a police report in 2017.
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SINGAPORE – A former Shell employee who played a leadership role in a long-running scheme to misappropriate fuel from the oil giant’s Pulau Bukom facility was sentenced to 21 years’ jail on March 30.
Richard Goh Chee Keong, 56, a Malaysian, pleaded guilty to 24 charges in relation to his involvement in a conspiracy to siphon $100 million worth of marine gas oil between August 2014 and January 2018.
Another 26 charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
The 50 charges he faced comprised 39 for criminal breach of trust, six for money laundering, four for corruption, and one for drug consumption.
Goh admitted receiving at least $1.5 million in criminal benefits, spending the money on property, at least two cars and investments, as well as saving a portion.
He has consented to the forfeiture of assets seized from him, worth $1.07 million, as compensation to Shell.
High Court judge Dedar Singh Gill granted a request by Goh to defer his sentence, and ordered him to surrender at the State Courts on April 20.
Eleven other former Shell employees have been sentenced to jail terms ranging from one year and four months to 29 years for their roles.
Goh started working at the Pulau Bukom facility in 1993 as a technician. At the time of the offences, he was an assistant production team leader and a shore loading officer.
He was recruited by Abdul Latif Ibrahim, 68, one of the two original masterminds who had conceived the overall scheme.
Goh recruited other team members and gave them directions, planned the loading of stolen oil onto vessels, and bribed independent surveyors to persuade them to turn a blind eye to the illegal activities.
Latif was sentenced in July 2025 to 25 years and two months’ jail after he admitted to leading a group of rogue employees to siphon $100 million worth of marine gas oil between August 2014 and January 2018.
Latif received at least $7 million in illicit gains, which he spent on luxury watches, expensive cars and property.
The other mastermind, Juandi Pungot, who was then 45 years old, was sentenced to 29 years’ jail in 2022 for leading a separate team that siphoned $127 million worth of fuel from the facility.
Juandi received about $5.6 million in criminal proceeds, which he spent on designer watches, cars and property.
Latif and Juandi began misappropriating fuel from the facility in 2007, when they were working in the same team.
The stolen oil was loaded onto a bunker ship in deals brokered through a middleman.
In early 2013, Latif left the team after a falling-out with the other syndicate members.
That year, he accepted Shell’s offer of re-employment, and was transferred to another team.
Latif and Juandi then each ran parallel illegal operations until their arrests in 2018.
Latif started a new syndicate by recruiting Goh, who planned the illegal loadings with him and recruited two other team members.
The illegal loadings began with the brokering of a deal to sell misappropriated fuel to vessels.
Using various methods to evade detection, the rogue employees worked together to route the gas oil from tanks onto the vessels.
They carefully planned routes in the pipelines to bypass meters, and activated pumps at the same time to mask the theft.
Where the meters could not be avoided, they temporarily tampered with them so that the illegal outflow would not be recorded.
Bribes were paid to bunker surveyors to not accurately report the amount of cargo loaded onto the vessels.
In early 2015, Shell began observing significant unidentified oil loss at Pulau Bukom.
After investigations, the company made a police report on Aug 1, 2017.
Between 2014 and 2018, Juandi’s team siphoned more than 203,000 tonnes of gas oil, while Latif’s group misappropriated more than 153,000 tonnes.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Kiera Yu sought a jail term of between 21 years and 22½ years for Goh.
She argued that he had a slightly lower culpability than Latif, but played a similar role to that of Muzaffar Ali Khan Muhamad Akram and Koh Choon Wei.
Muzaffar and Koh, who played key roles in Juandi’s team, have respectively been sentenced to 26½ years’ jail and 23½ years’ jail.
Goh’s lawyer, Mr Vinit Chhabra, said his client had intended to plead guilty to his offences since 2018, but the investigations took time to complete.
He added that Goh sold his home and has been living with his former wife.
