SingPost deliveries in whistle-blower report faced issues like conflict zones: fired CEO, CFO

A “SIGNIFICANT majority” of the shipments involved in Singapore Post’s (SingPost) parcelgate fiasco were linked to known issues like conflict zones.

This was the comeback from the company’s former group chief executive Vincent Phang and group chief financial officer Vincent Yik on Tuesday (Dec 31) – who, along with Yu Li, head of its international business unit (IBU) – were sacked for being “grossly negligent” in their handling of a whistle-blower report and subsequent investigations.

SingPost had earlier found and terminated three managers in the IBU for making manual updates of the “delivery failure” status code for parcels it had agreed to deliver even though no delivery attempt was made.

Phang and Yik issued their joint statement on New Year’s Eve in response to SingPost’s detailed account of its due process leading up to the termination of the trio.

The statement said: “As we had shared in our Dec 22 statement, the management was not part of the investigation following receipt of the whistle-blowing report, in line with the company’s whistle-blowing policy. We were asked for our views on Mar 11 and Apr 3, 2024, and we responded accordingly based on the facts that were provided to us at that time.”

They added that the “full facts came to light” for them only after the external forensics team’s investigations established the causative correlation on Apr 27, 2024.

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“A significant majority of the shipments in question were linked to destinations where there were known issues – such as conflict zones (for example Israel). It was therefore important to establish the financial impact prior to communicating with the customer as well as determining any wrongdoing by junior staff members.”

SingPost’s earlier statements had said the trio were given the opportunity to be heard before the decision was made to fire them.

The national postal service provider was responding to queries following the fallout from the announcement of the terminations.

Phang and Yik said the management had agreed with and followed the board’s instructions after they were briefed on the report and its findings, following the investigations by the external forensics team. A settlement with the customer was concluded. It did not have any material financial impact.

All three executives have said they plan to fight the terminations.

Shares of SingPost ended trading at S$0.53, up S$0.01 or 1.9 per cent, on Tuesday.