Iras officer jailed for trying to unlawfully boost cash payouts to his mother’s companies

SINGAPORE — A former Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) officer who tried to use an Iras computer to direct unauthorised cash payouts to his mother’s two companies has been sentenced to four months in jail.

Neo Haw Yng, 32, was a principal tax auditor with Iras’ Compliance, Clubs, Trust and Gaming branch at the time of the offences in 2015 — and would have got away with at least S$30,000 in loot, had the plan succeeded.

Neo, who was sentenced in the State Court on Friday (May 3), used the computer to try to increase payments to the companies under the Government’s Productivity Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme.

In one case, Neo unlawfully bumped up one of the cash payouts from S$4,881 to S$34,881. His mother was a director of the companies named XLN Studios and XLN Holdings, and Neo himself was found to be running the operations of the two companies.

Neo had pleaded guilty to three charges last month. They comprised two counts of gaining unauthorised access to computer data, and one count of performing an unauthorised modification. Three other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

The PIC scheme, which expired after 2018, gives tax deductions or cash payouts to businesses for investments to boost productivity, such as for automation and training purposes.

The court heard that part of Neo’s job scope was to process these payouts to companies, although he was authorised to do that only when he was assigned a case by his supervisor.

He was also given an employee account to access the Inland Revenue Interactive Network (IRIN) system — a database system adopted by the government agency to manage the Singapore tax system — which allowed him to amend the amount of payouts to companies.

Neo raised suspicion on Feb 11, 2015 when he tried to process a PIC application by XLN Marketing using documents signed off by one “Patrick Neo” who was listed as its general manager.

As the name on the documents closely resembled Neo’s, Iras conducted an internal investigation only to find that the employee had logged onto IRIN the morning before to increase the cash payouts of XLN Studios and XLN Holdings.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Thiagesh Sukumaran told the court that since Neo’s unauthorised access and modification was discovered early, Iras did not issue the payouts, so no loss was incurred.

Neo could have been jailed up to three years and fined up to S$10,000 for making unauthorised modification to IRIN’s contents. For accessing a computer system without authorisation, he could have been jailed up to two years and fined up to S$5,000.