Singapore - A Singapore court on Thursday sentenced the former general manager of Mitsui Oil (Asia) to 20 weeks in jail for facilitating a scam that eventually cost his company 81 million US dollars and led to its closure, media reports said.

Takayoshi Wada, 46, admitted that he had helped his then-colleague Noriyuki Yamazaki, 37, at the subsidiary of the Japanese trading house Mitsui and Co report false prices for the petroleum product naphta to the head office to disguise Yamazaki's losses in trading.

The cover-up came to light in November 2006 when Mitsui Tokyo conducted an investigation after discovering trade losses in its Singapore unit, the online edition of Straits Times newspaper reported.

Because of those losses, Mitsui wound down its Singapore subsidiary in February 2007.

Yamazaki had already been sentenced to five years in jail in February.