S’pore Company That Wants to Buy Newcastle Admitted to Doctoring Obama Images

By now, you should be scratching your head and wondering if you’re drunk.

Did a big company just admit to Photoshopping an image?

So how does it work? It’s kind of like this:

Here in Goody Feed, when we’re filming our videos, people like Jay Chou and Andy Lau would occasionally come by to say hi:

Anyone new to Goody Feed might just think that we’re BFFs with Jay Chou and Andy Lau.

And this is what happened to a Singapore company, except that the Photoshop skillz is better and the person whose clout is used is President Barack Obama.

S’pore Company That Wants to Buy Newcastle Admitted to Doctoring Obama Image

Lest this is confusing, let’s start from the beginning.

The three co-founders of the Bellagraph Nova group, including local entrepreneurs Nelson Loh and Terence Loh, have put in a bid to purchase English Premier League club Newcastle United.

The group, which was founded by Evangeline Shen, confirmed that it is working out details of an acquisition with the club.

“Bellagraph Nova Group’s founders are at an advanced stage of negotiation having already provided a LOI (Letter of Intent) as well as a Proof of Funds on Aug 10,” the group said.

They added that they’ve enlisted the help of England captain and Newcastle legend Alan Shearer – something that will likely please many fans – as well as former player Michael Chopra.

As you know, buying a football club isn’t like purchasing a toaster from Amazon; you have to be incredibly, incredibly rich.

According to its website, the Bellagraph Nova group is a US$12 billion multinational company that has 31 entitles across 100 countries.

Okay, all’s good. After all, our dear Sea, which owns Shopee, also bought a football club—Home United FC, which is now renamed as Lion City Sailors FC.

Nothing’s wrong and it just means that companies love buying football clubs. Lest you didn’t know, Goody Feed is also in talks of buying over Liverpool FC.

But here’s the thing: according to BN Group’s website and its press releases in recent weeks, there have been images of Obama with the firm’s owners.

Rich people taking a picture with a former US President? What’s new?

Except that they did a Daryl Aiden Yeow.

Instead of Mothership, Reuters uncovered the truth behind the images. They had found inconsistencies when they spoke to firms and people BH Group says it’s involved in.

And finally, BN Group’s head of investor relations, Nereides Antonio Giamundo de Bourbon, admitted that the company has “altered photos of Obama to make it look as though he had attended a meeting with its executives in Paris.”

Before that, this image was on their website:

Now, it’s no longer there. Instead, take a look at this:

That’s some Daryl Aiden Yeow skillz there.

But why, you ask.

It was mentioned that “some of the information in those materials was released prematurely or contained errors”. The firm denied that it has made any false claims about certain aspects of its business.

“We are serious people … the only ambiguous thing has been the photoshop picture,” Bourbon said. “There wasn’t any malicious aim behind it.”

Now, you might be wondering: why deny any false claims about certain aspects of its business? Aren’t this article about Photoshop?

Well, for a start, the group was just registered last month in Singapore, and had initially said that one of its companies, Hydra X, is implementing a trading system for the Singapore Exchange.

But  Hydra X denied both claims.

Also, Reuters did some CSI and couldn’t find the headquarters of the registered company address in Paris. Over in Singapore, they realised that they do use an office space but its staff were not always present.

Maybe they work at home lah I don’t know.

In any case, there are still some Obama images in the BN Group website, and they’re not Photoshopped: they were taken with the founders (of another company) during a charity event they sponsored in Singapore.

In the meantime, only time will tell if Newcastle would really belong to Singaporeans.