Man, 24, who tried to bribe driving test examiner jailed 3 weeks

SINGAPORE — A 24-year-old man was sentenced to three weeks’ jail on Wednesday (June 21) for offering a bribe to his driving examiner, the second such court case this month.

Li Qi Gang, a Chinese national working as a component assembler, had made several mistakes during his Class 3 practical driving test on Dec 15 last year. Besides forgetting to check his blind spot, he also failed to look out for oncoming traffic and did not halt at the stop line in the test circuit. 

The 25-minute test ended around 4.45pm, after which Li offered S$500 to his examiner, Mr Goh King Seng, as “coffee money”. 

Mr Goh asked him to clarify, and Li repeated himself. The examiner immediately alighted from the car and told Li to follow him into the briefing room at the Singapore Safety Driving Centre (SSDC). 

Inside the room, Mr Goh made Li repeat himself once more. This time, the bribe was captured on the closed-circuit television cameras in the room.

Li admitted that he had offered the money to “induce (Mr Goh) to therefore assess him as having passed his driving test”.

Appearing unrepresented in court on Wednesday, Li said that he was unfamiliar with the laws in Singapore and was remorseful for his actions. “This is my first offence and will be my last offence,” said Li, adding that he was the sole breadwinner in his family.

Rebutting him, Deputy Public Prosecutor Sanjiv Vaswani said: “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.”

District Judge Luke Tan noted that Li’s supposed lack of familiarity with the laws in Singapore was “neither here nor there”. 

“I don’t think bribery, even outside Singapore, is generally a lawful practice.”

Earlier this month, a 41-year-old man, Yang Qiang, was also sentenced to three weeks’ jail for attempting to bribe his driving examiner. He offered the examiner S$200 during his test at the SSDC on Feb 22, but the latter did not accept the money.

For giving a bribe, Li and Yang could have been jailed up to five years, fined a maximum of S$100,000, or both.