Singaporean cousins behind Newcastle bid remove their foundation's website saying it was put up 'prematurely'

SINGAPORE - The two men behind a Singapore-registered company that has made a move to take over Newcastle United football club have taken down the website of a foundation linked to them, saying that it had been "released prematurely".

The Loh Brothers Foundation at the Web address lohbrothersfoundation.org was removed on Tuesday evening (Aug 25), following queries by The Straits Times.

Cousins Nelson Loh, 40, and Terence Loh, 42, are co-founders of the Bellagraph Nova (BN) Group that has made a bid for the English Premier League football club.

In a statement, they said that "certain errant individuals" had put up the website of the foundation, which claimed as its board members Singapore Exchange Regulation chief executive officer Tan Boon Gin and Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan, among others.

The Straits Times understands from sources that Mr Tan is not a board member of the foundation, although Mr Sreenivasan is.

The Lohs did not address this, but said in their joint statement that they had recently discovered the existence of the website.

"While we had intended to set up a charitable foundation and had purchased the said domain name, the entity has yet to be set up. It appears that the content of the website were released prematurely and we are taking steps to address this," they said.

"The premature posting of the content of the website appears to be the result of the actions of certain errant individuals," they added.

A check on the domain name shows that it was registered on Feb 18 this year, and updated on July 30.

The two men had spoken about a Loh Foundation in interviews in 2018 and last year with various media.

In a 2018 profile story in The Peak magazine, they said that they had established a "Loh Foundation Girton College (University of Cambridge) Scholarship" to sponsor up to two Singaporean undergraduates every year.

An interview in The Robb Report published last year had said that the two men would have set up the Loh Foundation by the end of last year.

Before the Loh Brothers Foundation website was taken down on Tuesday, it had featured photos of the two cousins, who had often said in interviews that they were as close as brothers.

A description under the site's About Us section said the men seek to "positively impact communities by providing through sports programmes and tertiary education".

Other pages on the website had highlighted the sports sponsorship and education scholarships that the cousins had given out through companies or entities they founded or were linked to.

This includes the Novu Racing Team which the foundation website said had supported Singaporean race-car driver Yuey Tan since 2012.

It also had listed their contributions as "patrons of the Hong Kah (Gek Poh) grassroots community" and said they had "made tremendous contributions over the last 10 years to fund various Singapore grassroots charity events, such as charity tournaments, built two PAP Community Foundation pre-schools and worked with Playeum (a children's not-for-profit organisation)".

The People's Association has clarified that both Mr Terence Loh and Mr Nelson Loh are no longer patrons of Gek Poh Ville Community Club Management Committee (CCMC).

The website had stated that the foundation's other board members, apart from Mr Tan and Mr Sreenivasan, are the two Mr Lohs and Mr Yi Bao who is listed as the chairman of Chinese technology company Megvii Face++.

Megvii Technology has refuted this, saying that its chairman is Mr Yin Qi, and he is not a board member of the foundation.

In response to queries from The Straits Times, a spokesman for the company said that the person listed as "Megvii Face++ chairman Yi Bao", is not even an employee of the company.

He added that the company's name is also not Megvii Face++, as indicated on the foundation's now defunct website. Face++ is one of the company's products.

The removal of the website follows similar withdrawals of other webpages and press releases linked to the BN Group or its entities as more discrepancies about their claims emerged.