SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Former U.S. ambassador to Singapore said he had resigned from the board of directors of a city-state corporation linked to an organization competing for English club Newcastle United and mentioned “recent revelations” about the organization.
Kirk Wagar said he had left the directory of Axington, an indexed company on the Singapore Stock Exchange. Singapore’s entrepreneurs and cousins Terence Loh and Nelson Loh are the company’s majority shareholders and the president is Chinese jeweler Evangeline Shen.
The Loh and Shen are the shareholders and administrators of the all-new Bellagraph Nova Group (BN Group), which described itself as a “conglomerate” with $12 billion in profits last year and is in complex negotiations to buy Newcastle.
Reuters reported Saturday that Singapore-registered BN Group had admitted to tampering with photographs of former US President Barack Obama in marketing documents.
BN Group also said that some of the data contained in the documents was revealed prematurely or contained errors after Reuters discovered inconsistencies in targeting corporations and others with which BN Group said it was involved.
His wonderful announcement of a Newcastle offer adds to years of assumptions about the future of the club, which has been the subject of several failed takeover offers, adding a subsidized $390 million deal across Saudi Arabia that collapsed this month.
“Amazing people”
Singapore’s main newspaper, the Straits Times, reported Wednesday that BN Group had said that the publication of some of its marketing fabrics “appears to be the result of the movements of some people lost, with malicious intentions.”
BN Group responded to a request for comment from Reuters.
Axington, whose stocks have fallen by about 15% this week and were suspended Wednesday pending an announcement, responded to a request for comment.
Axington said in presentations to the Singapore Stock Exchange that he contemplates converting his call to NETX, the call from a robotics company BN Group said it is a component of its conglomerate.
Wagar, Singapore’s ambassador from 2013 to 2017, said he was invited to join the Axington board in June through Lohs. Documents filed through the company imply that he signed up for the Board of Directors in July.
“Due to recent disclosures, I resigned from this position and asked Axington to inform SGX (Singapore Exchange) and all interested parties of this fact,” Wagar said in response to a request for comments by email.
The Straits Times quoted BN Group as saying it would appoint an independent legal advisor to investigate the publication of marketing fabrics and will deal with any other media issues until investigations are completed.
Several statements attributed to BN Group and published by press release distributor PR Newswire in the past two months have recently been removed. A password is now required to scale on the BN Group website.
(Report through John Geddie; Edited through Neil Fullick)
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