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Doctor accused of helping HIV-positive boyfriend deceive MOM

SINGAPORE — While leading the National Public Health Unit in the Health Ministry (MOH), general practitioner Ler Teck Siang allegedly helped his HIV-positive American boyfriend to forge his blood-test result, so that the man could continue to work in Singapore.

SINGAPORE — While leading the National Public Health Unit in the Health Ministry (MOH), general practitioner Ler Teck Siang allegedly helped his HIV-positive American boyfriend to forge his blood-test result, so that the man could continue to work in Singapore.

The case was heard in a district court yesterday when the trial opened, with Ler, 36, wanting to dismiss a police statement that he claimed he gave under coercion. Ler’s lawyer Amarjit Singh discharged himself at the start of the trial, leaving his client unrepresented, and did not give any reasons for the eleventh-hour move.

In March 2008, Ler drew blood from his arm and labelled the test-tube of blood with his boyfriend’s personal particulars. His boyfriend, 32-year-old Mikhy K Farrera-Brochez, later applied for an Employment Pass with the Manpower Ministry using the negative HIV blood-test report.

A similar offence was committed in November 2013, when Ler’s boyfriend applied to retain his Personalised Employment Pass.

The month after that, Ler allegedly lied to an investigation manager from MOH’s surveillance and enforcement branch that Farrera-Brochez had not visited him at Twin City Medical Centre a month earlier, in a bid to halt investigations into the forged blood test.

He followed up with another lie in January 2014.

This time, he apparently told an investigation officer from the Central Police Division that it was Farrera-Brochez’s blood that had been tested for HIV in November 2013.

Farrera-Brochez was sentenced to 28 months’ jail in March this year for committing various offences including cheating and using forged educational certificates.

Ler is facing four charges for the trial, and a fifth charge under the Official Secrets Act has been stood down.

For the fifth charge, he was said to have “fail(ed) to retain possession of a thumbdrive” with a registry of individuals who had tested HIV-positive in Singapore before February 2012.

Ler had access to this information between March 2012 and May 23 last year in his former capacity as the head of MOH’s National Public Health Unit.

During the trial, Ler said that his police statement could not be admitted as evidence.

He accused Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Roy Lim, who was helping to supervise the investigation, of threatening him in the interview room on May 23 last year.

“He put his face inches from mine,” Ler told the court. “He told me, ‘We know what you did. Why don’t you stop playing games and tell me what I want to hear?’”

DSP Lim denied these allegations.

He said that his role in the investigations pertained only to Farrera-Brochez, and he never stepped into the interview room with Ler. His encounters with Ler were in the police station’s common areas such as the pantry and toilet, DSP Lim added.

The trial continues today with Ler intending to call Farrera-Brochez and his mother to the witness stand. 

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