A Vietnamese oil tanker captain has been jailed for over five years in Singapore for his role in a scheme that saw around $150 million of oil stolen from Shell's biggest refinery over several years, local media reported.
Doan Xuan Than, 47, on Thursday became the second person to be sentenced in a case that also involves several former employees of the local unit of Royal Dutch Shell who allegedly conspired to siphon thousands of tonnes of oil from the firm's Singapore refinery, Singapore's Straits Times said citing court hearings and documents.
Spotlight on illegal oil trade
The theft, which unfolded in the world's biggest ship refuelling hub and Southeast Asia's petroleum refining hub, shone a spotlight on an illegal oil trade worth tens of billions of dollars worldwide.
Than's sentencing comes almost two years after Singaporean police raids that led to over a dozen arrests for alleged offences dating back to 2014 in which around 340,000 tonnes of gasoil were filched from Shell's refinery which sits on an islet south of Singapore's mainland.
Charge sheets seen by Reuters allege that Than received over 1,000 metric tonnes of stolen oil from the Pulau Bukom refinery on the vessel MT Gaea on two occasions in December 2017.
Another Vietnamese national was jailed for 2-1/2-years in July for related offences, the Straits Times reported.
