Former managing director cheated AVA of nearly S$250,000 in false purchase claims for grants, gets 40 months' jail
SINGAPORE — A former managing director of a fish farming firm deceived a government agency into disbursing S$246,400 in claims that it submitted for buying equipment under a grant.

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- Tan Chee Boon, 49, was sentenced to 40 months’ jail for cheating and forgery offences committed between 2014 and 2017
- At the time, he was a managing director of a firm in the fish farming business
- He submitted false claims and forged documents to get grants from the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority
- In all, the authority ended up disbursing close to S$250,000 to the firm
- The claims were made under two grants meant to encourage farms to increase productivity and yields by buying automated and advanced farming systems
SINGAPORE — A former managing director of a fish farming firm deceived a government agency into disbursing S$246,400 in claims that it submitted for buying equipment under a grant.
Tan Chee Boon, 49, was on Monday (June 24) sentenced to 40 months’ jail for his offences.
He pleaded guilty to four charges relating to cheating and forgery.
Three other charges of similar nature were taken into consideration for sentencing.
The court allowed a deferment for Tan to manage some personal matters and to start serving his sentence from July 1.
In his job then, he was in charge of the day-to-day operations of the company Marine Life Aquaculture and also the applications made to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) for the grants.
AVA was dissolved in 2018 and part of its functions have been taken over by the Animal & Veterinary Service under the National Parks Board.
At the time of Tan's offences, AVA was a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development that regulated food safety, safeguarded animal and plant health, and facilitated the agri-food and fishery trade sectors.
It administered grants to support domestic farms in upgrading and expanding their production capabilities. This includes the Food Fund grant, which was later replaced by the Agriculture Productivity Fund grant in 2014.
WHAT HAPPENED
The court heard that in 2014, on or around March 29, Marine Life Aquaculture submitted an application to AVA for the Food Fund grant to buy a water treatment system to enhance its farm's productivity.
About three months later, AVA informed the company that the grant application for S$25,000 was successful.
On Jan 6 in 2015, Tan submitted an invoice from Hisland Technologies dated Dec 30, 2014, for the purchase of a water treatment system that cost S$50,000, and also a progress report stating that the system had helped to increase the farm’s productivity and reduce labour hours.
AVA then disbursed the S$25,000 grant to Marine Life Aquaculture about three months later.
However, on March 30 in 2015, Tan cancelled the purchase order of the water treatment system from Hisland Technologies so it was never delivered.
Then a year later in September, when AVA's senior executive Castor Yeo conducted a site inspection of Marine Life Aquaculture's premises to verify the purchase of the system, Tan showed a different equipment and covered up the fact that the company did not buy the model of the water treatment system stated in his submission document.
Mr Yeo then prepared a report to certify that he had sighted the water treatment system at Marine Life Aquaculture.
Investigations later revealed that the equipment that Tan showed to Mr Yeo during the site inspection was an oxygen generator and concentrator that were on loan to Marine Life Aquaculture from its supplier.
OTHER FALSE CLAIMS
On another occasion before September 2016, Tan was in charge of applying for a grant to AVA, this time for a project to set up systems that included a nano sterilisation plant, an automated mechanism and an centralised integrated technology system to enhance its farm's productivity.
He submitted an application for the Agriculture Productivity Grant that month for the project.
As the project value was above S$50,000, the company was required to submit quotations from three suppliers to AVA to support its application for the grant.
On Jan 5, 2017, Tan submitted three quotations from three suppliers, namely Marine Life Engineering, Singapore Aquaculture Products and Tepi Pantai.
The grant of S$700,000 was later approved.
On Sept 2, 2017, Tan submitted a claim with four tax invoices from Marine Life Engineering, which included a purchase of an automated mechanism with a heat pump control system at a cost of S$152,000.
Six days later, during a site inspection, Tan deliberately showed Mr Yeo from AVA some electrical distribution generators and told him that those were heat pumps.
AVA disbursed S$106,400 to Marine Life Aquaculture the next month.
Court documents showed that Tan had enquired about the heat pump system from a supplier, Mayekawa, sometime in October 2016.
Mayekawa issued an invoice to Marine Life Aquaculture for it, but the company did not buy it from Mayekawa.
Investigations also found that one of the suppliers, Tepi Pantai, was a fictious entity. Tan had asked a company to design a stamp for Tepi Pantai and later used it to create fake quotation documents.
After Tan resigned from the company, Mr Goh Cheng Liang, a new managing director, discovered in early 2018 forged documents used to support the grant applications and he filed a police report.
Another police report was made in July 2018 by Ms Jolene Lim, an executive manager with AVA at the time.
‘CAUSED REPUTATION HARM TO AVA’
On Monday, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Colin Ng sought a jail sentence of between 47 and 55 months, saying that Tan had "pilfered from the limited public funds by causing not only substantial financial losses, but also reputational harm to AVA".
DPP Ng said that the amount of money that Tan cheated from AVA was significant and that he had not made any restitution.
In mitigation, defence lawyer Mohamed Arshad Mohamed Tahir called the prosecution’s sentence submission “manifestly excessive”.
Mr Arshad said that Tan’s overriding concern at the time was the company's well-being and growth, adding that the money from AVA went towards “maximising its productivity and efficiency”.
In meting out the sentence, District Judge Khoo Zhi Xuan noted that Tan had played a major active role in the offences, having masterminded and executed the cheating and forgery offences.
For cheating, he could have been jailed for up to three years or fined, or both.
For cheating and dishonestly inducing a delivery of property, he could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
For committing forgery, he could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.