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Ex-Harry’s director back in court to face S$30k cheating charges

SINGAPORE — A former director of bar chain Harry’s International, previously fined for making false declarations of staff salaries, was hauled to court again yesterday for allegedly cheating the Government out of S$30,000 in training grants.

A former director of bar chain Harry’s International, previously fined for making false declarations of staff salaries, was hauled to court again on Tuesday (July 25) for allegedly cheating the Government out of S$30,000 in training grants. TODAY file photo

A former director of bar chain Harry’s International, previously fined for making false declarations of staff salaries, was hauled to court again on Tuesday (July 25) for allegedly cheating the Government out of S$30,000 in training grants. TODAY file photo

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SINGAPORE — A former director of bar chain Harry’s International, previously fined for making false declarations of staff salaries, was hauled to court again yesterday for allegedly cheating the Government out of S$30,000 in training grants.

Parmjit Kaur, 50, allegedly submitted false claims for training grants from the then-Singapore Workforce Development Agency between 2011 and 2013.

The grants were purportedly meant to go towards in-house courses that Harry conducted for its employees.

Kaur, who was in charge of Harry’s training department at the time, faces 25 counts of using false information to secure grants for Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) courses. She faces another 12 counts of submitting false claims for grants for non-WSQ courses.

For each of these charges under the Skills Development Levy Act, she could be fined up to S$10,000, jailed up to 12 months, or both, if convicted.

SkillsFuture Singapore, which was recently formed to implement SkillsFuture, said it “takes a serious view of any individual, training provider or organisation that abuses its funding schemes and will not hesitate to take action against those who contravene its funding rules and guidelines”.

In 2015, Kaur was charged with 20 counts of falsely declaring salaries when applying for work passes for foreign employees, in order to obtain Employment Passes (EP) for them.

The offences in question took place between April and September 2013 after she switched responsibilities to human resources at Harry’s International.

She told her staff to declare in the 20 foreign employees’ work pass applications that they would draw salaries of S$3,100, even though she knew they would be paid less. The qualifying monthly salary for employment passes at that time was S$3,000.

These workers were then made to reimburse the company S$1,600 for meals and transportation, a day after their salaries were banked into their accounts.

In fact, only some of the employees got meals and transportation provided, and even then, the cost to the company was less than S$1,600.

Kaur pleaded guilty to these charges and was sentenced to a S$40,000 fine last June.

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