ICA officer charged with taking bribe from Malaysian national to expedite PR application

SINGAPORE — An Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) customer service officer was charged on Thursday (Oct 10) with receiving bribes from a Malaysian national applying to be a Singapore permanent resident (PR). 

The 49-year-old officer, Lucy Teo, was charged with two counts of engaging in a conspiracy with another woman Sharon Loo Wai Woon to corruptly obtain S$1,500 from Malaysian national Fenny Tey Hui Nee, the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) and the police said in a joint release. 

The money was meant as an inducement to expedite Tey’s PR application. 

Teo also faced 20 counts of unauthorised access into ICA’s Central Identification and Registration Information System to retrieve the 24-year-old’s PR application status on 11 occasions, as well as records of a man’s passport number three times and records of another woman’s PR application status six times. 

Loo, 28, was also charged with two counts of engaging in a conspiracy with Teo to corruptly obtain the money from Tey.

Tey was charged with two counts of bribing Teo with a total of S$1,500 as an inducement to expedite her PR application. 

All three were granted four weeks' adjournment to engage lawyers.

ICA said in a statement that Teo was reported to the police after the case was detected through internal checks and investigations. 

As a customer service officer, Teo's responsibility did not involve the processing of applications for permanent residence, the authority said. 

"She was handling public inquiries on NRIC matters," said ICA, adding that it takes a serious view of errant officers. 

Anyone convicted of a corruption offence can be fined up to S$100,000, jailed for up to five years, or both. 

Anyone who knowingly causes a computer to perform any function for the purpose of securing access without authority to any programme or data held in any computer can be fined up to S$5,000, jailed for up to two years, or both. CNA

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