Geoffery Cassidy, the co-founder of  Zetta Jet, was charged in court on Wednesday (October 12th, 2022) with embezzling more than S$11m ($7.6m).

Some 34 charges were made including: criminal breach of trust by misappropriation, abetting the forgery of invoices and instigating others to falsely record payments he made. He has always denied any wrongdoing.

Cassidy was a managing director of Zetta Jet, an aircraft charter operator, between 2015 and 2017. He was also a director at aircraft management and consulting firm, Asia Aviation Company, between 2009 and 2017, that was merged into Zetta Jet.

He is accused of using more than S$1.4m of the embezzled funds for property-related expenditures and coercing a company into delivering more than $400,000 to Asia Aviation on five occasions between 2014 and 2015.

The offences in the charges date back to 2014. Cassidy, an Australian national, is accused of dishonestly misappropriating S$2.67m, when he was director of Zetta Jet in Singapore, in September 2016.

Cassidy’s other charge sheets include an accusation of abetting Zetta Jet’s finance manager in June 2017 to post a false journal entry of $1.35m. He is also accused of personally using criminal proceeds. One incident, in December 2016, Cassidy allegedly used S$1.2m that was in a shared bank account.

Charges listed: 

• Six counts of criminal breach of trust under Section 406 of the Penal Code
• Three counts of using benefits from criminal conduct under Section 47(1)(c) punishable under Section 47(6)(a) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act
• Five counts of cheating and dishonestly inducing a delivery of property under Section 420 of the Penal Code
• Eight counts of abetting the falsification of accounts under Section 477A of the Penal Code
• Lastly, 12 counts of abetting forgery under Section 465 read with Section 109 of the Penal Code. 

A woman, June Tang Kim Choo, aged 46, was also charged on Wednesday in relation to the case. She was a director of Zetta Jet between 2015 and 2017 and allegedly failed to use reasonable diligence in her duties by authorising payments of more than S$5m without checking if they were for company purposes.

Cassidy was bailed for S$300,000 and will return to court next month.

Cassidy was fined S$4,000 in June, 2019 for verbally abusing a police officer who had been called to Cassidy’s home after he got into an altercation with a dinner guest.

Also, in September, 2017 Zetta Jet’s management team confirmed that the FBI was investigating allegations of fraud against Cassidy. In a bankruptcy court filing from 2017, Michael Maher, then-CEO of Zetta Jet, said: “The FBI has interviewed the Debtors’ officers and shareholders about these matters, and the Debtors’ current management is cooperating fully in the belief that this will advance recovery for creditors.”