Senior exec breached confidentiality by downloading thousands of files when he resigned: Court

Around the time he resigned as head of investor relations at a Singapore-based fund management company, a man downloaded thousands of documents from its cloud storage on Google Drive.

Mr Rajan Sunil Kumar was subsequently sued by his former employer, Hayate Partners, for breach of confidentiality by accessing and downloading the documents, and by retaining copies of the documents beyond the termination of his employment. 

The files included documents relating to Hayate’s investment strategies; personal identification information and bank account details of clients; meeting minutes and call logs; and personal identification information of the firm’s key personnel.

After he was ordered by the court to hand over his electronic devices for forensic examination by Hayate’s experts, Mr Rajan wiped them clean.

He then argued that his former employer had no evidence to show that he retained the downloaded documents beyond the termination of his employment.

In a judgment released on March 14, a High Court judge said the only reason Hayate did not have such evidence was due to Mr Rajan’s intentional and deliberate acts of deleting the applications on his devices.

Justice Dedar Singh Gill said: “That is akin to a thief deleting the video footage capturing his act of stealing, and then saying that no one can prove that he had stolen something.”

The judge found that Mr Rajan breached his confidentiality obligations by downloading certain documents to his personal MacBook and by retaining the files after the termination of his employment.

But Justice Gill also found that Mr Rajan did not breach confidentiality for other downloads that were made to his Dell work laptop, which was returned to the company upon the termination of his employment.

Justice Gill ordered the cache files that remain in the MacBook to be deleted under the supervision of Hayate or its forensic expert and lawyers.

Hayate’s claim for damages will be assessed at a separate hearing.

The Singapore-incorporated company held a capital markets services licence and mainly managed the Hayate Japan Equity Long-Short Fund.

It was registered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore as a financial institution at the time of the proceedings.

A Straits Times check of its current status shows that a notice of cessation has been lodged.

Mr Rajan, who is 38 this year, was the company’s head of investor relations from Dec 9, 2019 to Dec 22, 2021.

His primary role was to reach out to prospective investors for the purposes of promoting the fund.

During the course of his employment, the company did not provide him with regular payslips.

This increasingly became a bugbear as Mr Rajan, who is from India, needed to submit his payslips to apply for Singapore citizenship.

He eventually tendered his resignation verbally on Dec 8, 2021.

The company conducted an audit of his IT activities as part of its usual protocol when an employee resigns.

In total, Mr Rajan was alleged to have downloaded about 4,800 distinct files from the company’s online cloud storage into his MacBook over three days in 2021, on Dec 8, Dec 20 and Dec 21.

He was alleged to have retained these files after the termination of his employment.

Hayate, represented by Ms Sharon Chong of RHTLaw Asia, sued him in 2022.

The company relied on clauses in his letter of appointment in arguing that he was contractually obliged not to retain confidential information.

Hayate also obtained a court order for Mr Rajan to hand over all devices which were used to download the confidential information so that they could be examined by its forensic experts.

Mr Rajan handed over his MacBook and iPhone after deleting most of the applications from the devices.

Hayate argued that Mr Rajan knew that removing the applications could wipe away crucial metadata and limit the evidence against him recoverable by the forensic experts.

Mr Rajan, represented by Mr Alfred Dodwell, argued that there were no explicit terms in his letter of appointment imposing an obligation on him not to access and download the information for non-work-related purposes.

He accepted that the downloads made on Dec 8 and Dec 21 were into his MacBook, but maintained that the Dec 20 downloads were into the Dell laptop. 

Mr Rajan’s explanation for deleting the applications was that he did not know who he was giving away the devices to and that he had started in a new job.

In his judgment, Justice Gill said Mr Rajan’s explanation for the deletions rang hollow and was unsatisfactory.

Regarding the downloads on Dec 8 and Dec 21, the judge concluded that it was more likely than not that Mr Rajan had retained the confidential documents in his personal devices beyond the last day of his employment.

The judge said it was more likely that the Dec 20 downloads were into the Dell laptop, based on the timings of the downloading and syncing between Mr Rajan’s devices and the firm’s servers.

Mr Rajan had asserted that he downloaded Skype chat logs on Dec 21 to use as evidence in lodging complaints to various authorities against Hayate.

But Justice Gill said Mr Rajan had already gathered the necessary proof by taking numerous screenshots of the Skype conversations relating to the issue of his payslips, and there was no need for him to download the entire chat log.

Selina Lum is senior law correspondent at The Straits Times.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

Hayate Partners Pte Ltd v Rajan Sunil Kumar [2025] SGHC 41

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