Thumb drive inventor Henn Tan faces falsification, cheating charges

Henn Tan, the founder and chairman emeritus of Singapore’s Trek 2000 International, has been hit with multiple charges involving falsification of accounts and cheating external auditors.

Tan was charged along with three former Trek 2000 executives including then chief financial officer Gurcharan Singh, executive director Poo Teng Pin, and president of regional sales Foo Kok Wah.

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The thumb drive inventor currently faces a total of 15 charges with accusations of him committing such offenses since 2006, The Straits Times reported.

He was alleged to have committed seven counts of falsification, including entries in Trek 2000’s 2015 financial statements, as well as recording fictitious sales and purchases in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

In addition, he was also accused of conspiring with Singh between 2006 and 2011 to create false entries in Trek’s 2011 to 2015 financial statements pertaining to the licensing income of the group.

All of the four people charged also allegedly conspired to deceive external auditor Ernst & Young into believing that the company’s financial statements for 2015 had been properly drawn up, the report said.

Their cases will be mentioned on November 6.

Trek 2000 is a Singapore Exchange-listed company credited for inventing the ThumbDrive, a USB data storage device that changed the way digital data is stored and transferred. Tan created and patented the technology back in 2000.

In 2016, it was revealed that key executives were interviewed by the Commercial Affairs Department in relation to a possible offense. The SGX’s regulation unit put Tan on its watch list last year as a number of board members and other executives resigned from the company.

Tan later quit his role as chairman, CEO, and executive director of Trek 2000.