SINGAPORE: A businessman who held a grudge against his former employee and wanted him arrested offered a bribe to a former police officer, who then offered another bribe to an investigation officer to get the job done.
For their crimes, businessman Yee Kok Siong, 35, and former cop Tan Bee Song, 42, were sentenced to two and four months' jail respectively on Wednesday (Nov 6).
AdvertisementAdvertisementThe investigation officer had turned down the bribe, but did not report the matter. When the issue came to light, he was jailed and lost his job.
Yee was found guilty of offering Tan S$4,000 to get a man named Hoon Tian Jie arrested for supposed offences like drug activities and bookmaking.
He had offered the money to Tan in July 2016, so that the latter could get Mr Hoon arrested in order to "satisfy a personal grudge (Yee) harboured" against him.
This was "an act of malice", said the prosecution during the trial.
AdvertisementAdvertisementTan received the sentence for two counts of corruption and a charge under the Official Secrets Act, with a third charge taken into consideration for sentencing.
VICTIM DID NOT HONOUR BET, CAUSED BREAK-UP
Mr Hoon had worked for Yee until around 2014.
Yee was unhappy with Mr Hoon because the latter supposedly did not honour a bet that entitled Yee to S$25,000 in winnings.
Mr Hoon also spread rumours about Yee, causing Yee's girlfriend to break up with him in 2016, the court heard.
Yee had known his co-accused Tan from 2005 as Tan's nephew was a friend of Yee's.
Sometime in May 2016, after Tan had left the Singapore Police Force (SPF) where he spent five years as an investigation officer in the unlicensed moneylending squad, Yee asked to meet with Tan to tell him about his issues with Mr Hoon.
In July that same year, they met a car park in Ang Mo Kio, where Yee offered Tan the S$4,000 to help get Mr Hoon arrested.
Later that month on Jul 31, Tan met his former colleague, SPF investigation officer Shukor Warji, and offered him S$2,000 to arrest Mr Hoon.
There is no evidence that Yee had paid Tan, but the prosecution submitted that this was because the bribe was conditional on Mr Hoon's arrest and that Tan would not be paid until this was done.
YEE JUST WANTED TAN TO HELP MAKE A POLICE REPORT: DEFENCE
Yee had claimed in his defence that he had merely approached Tan to make a police report on his behalf as Tan could do so in a manner that the report received "due attention due to his police experience".
Tan's defence lawyers alleged that Shukor, who testified in the trial against the two accused persons, had "an axe to grind" with Tan.
This is because Shukor was dismissed from the police force, lost his bonus and was jailed for a week in March 2018 for failing to arrest Tan for his attempted bribery.
The prosecution had asked for three months' jail for Yee and six months for Tan, saying there was a risk of a loss of confidence in Singapore's public administration.
"In particular, they are inimical to the administration of justice, an essential institution of government," said Deputy Public Prosecutors Eugene Sng and Thiagesh Sukumaran.
"Coercive powers are vested in law enforcement agencies for the purpose of investigating offences and maintaining law and order. The improper use of such powers would undermine public confidence in the administration of justice and the Singapore Police Force."
Yee's defence lawyers said their client never offered gratification to any police officer or public servant, instead characterising the issue as "a private citizen asking another private citizen to help him".
Tan's counsel said he was not a police officer at the time and that he was the breadwinner of the family, with two school-going daughters.
District Judge Terence Tay in sentencing highlighted the "increasing challenges that confront law enforcement in today's world" and cited a speech by Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam at the Police Workplan Seminar 2018.
In the speech, Mr Shanmugam talked about securing the trust of the public, without which "everything else becomes much, much more difficult".
"Your crime rates won’t be like this. Your police officer ratio to population cannot be like this. Everything you do will be under much greater criticism," read the judge from Mr Shanmugam's speech. "And that will impact the way you operate as well. And we have seen in other countries how easily trust in the police can break down. When that happens, law and order breaks down too."
"Therefore, the integrity of the police force has to be scrupulously protected and defended," said the judge.
Both Tan and Yee are out on S$20,000 bail each, pending appeal.
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