Cordlife probe: Chief financial officer arrested and released on bail

SINGAPORE: Cordlife’s Chief Monetary Officer Thet Hnin Yi has been arrested amid investigations into the firm’s mishandling of twine blood models.

The firm announced this in a bourse submitting on Wednesday (Mar 27), saying she has been released on bail after attending one other interview with the police’s Commercial Affairs Division (CAD).

“The firm understands from her that the offence for which she is arrested and released on bail, is likewise in connection with doable breaches of the disclosure responsibilities of the firm in the case of the irregular temperatures of a obvious cryogenic storage tank of the firm, which changed into once first disclosed by the firm in its announcement dated Nov 30, 2023,” Cordlife said.

It changed into once announced in November final year that seven of Cordlife’s storage tanks were exposed to temperatures above acceptable limits, adversarial twine blood models belonging to as a minimum 2,150 purchasers. One more 17,000 purchasers were possibly affected.

Ms Thet is the sixth person to be arrested in connection with the firm’s mishandling of twine blood models.

Final week, it changed into once announced that five others – including mature Group CEO Tan Poh Lan – were arrested. Cordlife said on the time that Ms Thet had been requested to support with investigations and had not been arrested.

The firm said on Wednesday that it’d be in its interests for Ms Thet to proceed as CFO as she has been with Cordlife for 17 years and is “very acquainted” with its monetary numbers and records.

She is on the second working with exterior auditors to finalise the accounts for the monetary year that ended on Dec 31, 2023.

“Ms Thet is the foremost person liaising and managing responses to be sent to the regulators and works carefully with the firm’s appropriate advisers in the case of announcements to be released by the firm, and with the firm secretary in the case of company secretarial issues,” added Cordlife.

She has also been “instrumental and proactive” in helping the board with the ongoing work undertaken by the firm to investigate and tackle the lapses identified by the Ministry of Effectively being (MOH) in the case of its Singapore operations.

Cordlife said this could possibly proceed to reassess the suitability of Ms Thet’s appointment as CFO, pending the construction of the investigations.