The police rearrested the former chief executive of China Aviation Oil, Chen Jiulin, along with four other top executives, saying they would appear in court Thursday morning to hear the charges against them. Chen had been arrested in December but was released on bail.

The arrests came after an investigation into the company's failure turned up allegations of fraud leading up to the jet fuel trader's collapse as a result of the derivatives losses.

Even as the executives were being detained by Singapore's white-collar crime unit Wednesday, the company's creditors met and approved a sweetened offer on how to restructure the company's debt.

The scandal surrounding China Aviation is the biggest here since Nicholas Leeson brought down Barings Bank in 1995. The authorities here have highlighted the risks the case poses to Singapore's reputation as a financial center. The city has been luring a growing number of companies from China.

Analysts say the case highlights the risks of investing in Chinese companies wherever they list, given the poor culture of openness and corporate governance in China.

Along with Chen, police said those arrested included China Aviation's chairman, Jia Changbi; its former head of finance, Peter Lim; a company director who heads China Aviation's restructuring team, Gu Yanfei; and another Beijing-appointed director, Li Yongji.

Jia is also president of China Aviation's state-controlled parent, China Aviation Oil Holding, while Gu is China Aviation Oil Holding's general manager. In addition to being the Singapore company's largest shareholder and creditor, China Aviation Oil Holding supplied six of its nine directors.

The police declined to describe exactly what charges would be filed, but China Aviation said that Chen, whom it suspended as chief executive after the company's collapse last November, faced 15 charges, including criminal activity and violations of Singapore's securities and company laws. News reports said the charges were likely to include insider trading, violations on disclosure and potentially forgery.

Two reports by the audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, circulated by China Aviation despite being labeled "private and confidential," provided most details about what went wrong at the company. PricewaterhouseCoopers was assigned to investigate the company's collapse by the Singapore authorities. In its second report, which was issued Friday, investigators blamed Chen for committing the company to its disastrous trading strategy and then concealing its losses, saying its evidence and interviews suggested that he was motivated by "personal ambition" and "a need to surpass his past achievements as CEO."

Before its collapse, China Aviation was responsible for purchasing nearly all of China's jet fuel requirements. China Aviation Oil first began trading oil-related derivatives to hedge its jet-fuel purchases against fluctuations in the price of oil. But, according to PricewaterhouseCooper's latest report, China Aviation then moved to use derivatives to bet on market trends in early 2003 after what it said was a "casual exchange of e-mails" between Chen and his chief trader.

The report says that China Aviation never altered its risk management rules to reflect this more aggressive derivatives trading strategy. But traders exceeded even the company's existing trading limits, the report said.

Chris Sanda, an analyst at Singapore brokerage DBS Vickers, said, "They took a position and rather than follow their own rules, they chose to ignore them."

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