Former transport minister S. Iswaran is the first political office-holder in nearly five decades to be tried in court. - ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): More than a year after his arrest by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in July 2023, former transport minister S. Iswaran will go to court on Sept 24 to defend himself against 35 criminal charges.
The first tranche of the High Court trial will be held until Sept 27. Further trial dates have been set in November and from January to March 2025.
Iswaran, 62, is the first political office-holder in nearly five decades to be tried in court.
Prosecutors have accused him of obtaining items worth more than $400,000 from Mr Ong Beng Seng, billionaire hotelier and chairman of Formula One (F1) race promoter Singapore GP, as well as Mr David Lum, managing director of mainboard-listed construction company Lum Chang Holdings.
The items include tickets to F1 races, football matches and musical shows allegedly obtained from Mr Ong, and bottles of whisky, golf clubs and a Brompton bicycle allegedly obtained from Mr Lum.
Lawyers for the former minister described Mr Ong and Mr Lum as Iswaran’s close friends and said the items were gifts.
The majority of the charges Iswaran is facing come under a rarely used provision that has been part of Singapore’s criminal legislation since 1871.
Section 165 of the Penal Code makes it an offence for a public servant to accept or obtain anything of value, for free or for inadequate payment, from any person with whom he is involved in an official capacity.
However, Iswaran’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, said the code of conduct for ministers states that ministers and their family members are not prevented from accepting gifts from family or personal friends “in a genuinely personal capacity”.
“His state of mind at that time was that not only was he dealing with close friends, he had... no knowledge or suspicion that the gifts were offered as veiled gratification,” added Mr Singh.
Mr Ong and Mr Lum have not been charged with any offence.
Observers noted that the court’s ruling on the provision could impact how public servants ought to deal with others in a way that does not infringe the law.
The prosecution asked for Iswaran’s case to be transferred from the State Courts to the High Court for this reason and because of strong public interest in the case.
Mr Ong and his wife, prominent businesswoman Christina Ong, and Mr Lum are among the 56 prosecution witnesses who have been lined up to take the stand.
The prosecution witnesses also include Iswaran’s wife, Ms Kay Mary Taylor; Iswaran’s former personal assistant, Ms Ivy Chan Wan Hiang; deputy chairman of Singapore GP, Mr Colin Syn Wai Hung; and Singapore GP director, Mr Mok Chee Liang.
The judge presiding over the case is Justice Vincent Hoong.
The lawyers
The battle lines were drawn even before the trial dates were announced. The prosecution wanted two separate trials, but Iswaran filed a court application for all his charges to be heard in a single trial. He won this bid in May.
Iswaran then tried three times without success to get the prosecution to provide him with statements of every witness it intends to call for the trial. He fought all the way up to the Court of Appeal, the highest court in the land.
The prosecution team conducting the trial is led by Deputy Attorney-General Tai Wei Shyong, who has served as a deputy public prosecutor in the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) and as an assistant registrar of the Supreme Court.
He was appointed chief prosecutor in 2013.
In his more than 20 years in public service, Mr Tai held a number of key appointments, including deputy secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs and director of the Internal Security Department.
He was appointed deputy attorney-general in 2021 and made senior counsel that year.
Mr Tai was the lead counsel for the AGC at the coroner’s inquiry into the death of American researcher Shane Todd in 2013.
As deputy attorney-general, he represented the prosecution in various appeals.
These include an appeal for a jail term to be meted out to the former chief executive of food and beverage company The Prive Group for assaulting a 13-year-old boy, and an appeal for a longer jail term for a knife-wielding man who went on a rampage and was shot by the police in Clementi.
The defence team is led by Mr Singh, who is one of Singapore’s best-known lawyers and has been recognised as a formidable litigator by local and international legal publications.
He was in the pioneer batch of senior counsel appointed in 1997. He left law firm Drew & Napier after 37 years in 2019 to set up his own firm, Davinder Singh Chambers.
He served four terms as a People’s Action Party (PAP) MP from 1988 to 2006.
A commercial lawyer for more than 30 years, Mr Singh has handled many complex cases in areas such as banking, company disputes and intellectual property.
He is known for representing former prime ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong in various defamation suits.
He also acts for Hin Leong founder Lim Oon Kuin, better known as O.K. Lim, in the ongoing criminal and civil cases relating to the collapsed oil trading firm.
Mr Tai and Mr Singh have met as opponents in 2015. Mr Singh was then conducting the appeal of a doctor against his conviction and sentence for molesting a patient, while Mr Tai was the prosecutor arguing against the appeal.
Rarely used provision
Of the 35 charges levelled against Iswaran, two are for corruption and one is for allegedly performing an act that could likely obstruct the course of justice.
The obstruction charge relates to $5,700 he is said to have repaid to Singapore GP for the cost of his business-class flight from Doha to Singapore that he purportedly took on Dec 11, 2022, at Mr Ong’s expense through Singapore GP.
The remaining 32 charges come under Section 165. Legal experts say the public servant need not have done anything in exchange for the item obtained.
This is unlike a charge of corruption, where the prosecution has to prove that a bribe was given to the recipient in exchange for showing favour to the bribe-giver.
The prescribed punishment for each charge of obtaining valuable items as a public servant is a jail term of up to two years, or a fine, or both.
On the other hand, each corruption charge carries a jail term of up to five years, a fine of up to $100,000, or both.
In Iswaran’s case, the potential maximum jail term is seven years, as the charges against him involve contracts with a statutory board.
Before Iswaran was charged in January 2024, there were no reported cases under Section 165.
It has now emerged that there are three known prosecutions in 1952 and 1953, although there is scant information about these cases.
Under Singapore’s public service rules on gifts, civil servants cannot retain gifts worth more than $50, unless they pay the market value of the gift to the Government.
Political office-holders adopt “similar spirit and principles”, Minister-in-charge of the Public Service Chan Chun Sing said in Parliament in August 2023.
He added that there are specific rules spelt out in the code of conduct for ministers. The code of conduct for ministers has been in place since 1954 and was last updated in 2005.
Given the potentially wide impact of Section 165, the prosecution had decided that Iswaran’s case should first be considered by the High Court.
If any appeal arises from the High Court’s decision, the Court of Appeal can then make the final pronouncement on the parameters of the provision, the prosecution had said. - The Straits Times/ANN
