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SINGAPORE: A man has been sent to jail over more than S$611,000 in bribes given to a facilities management director at the Singapore Zoological Gardens in a jobs-for-cash conspiracy.
Toh Say Yong, 69, a director at his family’s construction business Shin Yong Construction (SYC) at the time of the offences, had worked together with his brother and son to give the bribes to advance the company’s business interests with Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS).
WRS then awarded jobs to SYC worth a total of around $10.5 million between April 2013 and October 2016.
The Singapore Zoological Gardens, now known as the Singapore Zoo, was a subsidiary of WRS.
On Wednesday (Nov 27), Toh was sentenced to a year and 10 months’ jail after he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of graft, with another 76 charges taken into consideration during his sentencing.
According to court documents, Toh’s late father – who had set up SYC – and younger brother Too Say Kiong, 58, had entered into a corrupt arrangement with Barry Chong Peng Wee, 57, some time before 2005, in which WRS would award jobs to SYC in exchange for cash.
Under the arrangement, SYC had to mark up its bid for WRS projects by roughly 10 per cent.
The prosecution said that Chong would then tell Too a specific price to bid at to ensure that a job would be awarded to SYC, in exchange for monetary commissions, which were reflected in the mark-ups.
Too would then prepare an SYC invoice or quotation to put in a bid at the inflated amount.
“Too would also ask other contractors to put in bids that were usually slightly higher than the bid price given to them by Barry to ensure that WRS would award the job to SYC,” prosecutors said in court documents.
The quotations WRS received would be presented to Chong and his managers. Chong would generally award the job to the lowest quote received, the court heard.
Toh found out about the corrupt arrangement from his brother in 2005, when they took over SYC’s management following their father’s death. Toh agreed to continue with it.
The prosecution said that Chong would tabulate the “commissions” owed to him on a piece of paper before passing it to Too, who would then inform his brother of the amount needed.
Toh – who was also a project manager at SYC at the time of his offences – would then arrange for the sum to be withdrawn from SYC’s bank accounts, for Too to pass to Chong, said the prosecution.
The arrangement continued after Toh’s son, Toh Yong Soon, 39, replaced Too in SYC. Court documents do not state when this was.
The offences resulted in WRS suffering more than $611,000 in losses.
Separately, Toh Say Yong also worked with Too to give more than $50,000 in bribes to Chin Fong Yi, 46, who was a facilities manager at the zoo at the time.
Court documents stated that this was done in exchange for her silence over the offences involving Chong.
Some time in either 2010 or 2011, Chin had noticed that the prices on the quotations submitted by SYC and its other contractors were very close to one another.
Suspecting that the contractors could be “doing price fixing” with Chong, she met Too to ask him if such an arrangement existed.
Too told Chin to “keep quiet and close one eye” and offered her a stack of $50 notes, which she understood to be a reward for her silence on the corrupt arrangement.
The prosecution said that Chin initially rejected the money, but later accepted more than $50,000 in bribes between April 2010 and May 2015, after Too told her about Chong’s involvement in the offences.
Court documents did not disclose how the offences came to light, but they ended after the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau started looking into the matter in 2016.
On Nov 27, the prosecution urged the court to sentence Toh Say Yong to up to two years and three months’ jail, stressing that he was motivated by greed and that the scheme was sophisticated.
His defence lawyers, however, asked for their client to be given up to 15 months’ jail, saying he was not involved in communications with Chong.
Without revealing details, one of his lawyers also said he has medical conditions that affect multiple organs, including his liver.
Toh Yong Soon, Too and Chin were dealt with in court earlier. Chong’s case is pending. He and Chin are no longer working for WRS, which is now known as the Mandai Wildlife Group. - The Straits Times/ANN
