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Man and daughter get jail for paying S$400,000 in bribes to keep lucrative contracts for family transport firm

SINGAPORE — A father and daughter running a family transport and logistics firm were sentenced to jail on Friday (May 12) over paying more than S$400,000 in bribes to executives from logistics giant DHL and food packager Tetra Pak so that they could retain lucrative contracts with the two firms.

Tan Hook Beng, 63, was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty to a charge of offering bribes, while his daughter Tan Pei Fung, 40, was sentenced to eight months’ jail for intentionally aiding her father in his offence.
Tan Hook Beng, 63, was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty to a charge of offering bribes, while his daughter Tan Pei Fung, 40, was sentenced to eight months’ jail for intentionally aiding her father in his offence.
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  • Tan Hook Beng, 63, and his daughter Tan Pei Fung, 40, ran family-owned Likok Logistics
  • In late 2018, Tan Hook Beng agreed to take part in a bribery scheme in order to retain contracts with logistics giant DHL and packager Tetra Pak
  • Between July 2019 and January 2021, father and daughter made 19 payments totalling S$403,370.93
  • The daughter tried to put a stop to the bribes and eventually filed a report with CPIB over an unrelated matter involving one of the bribe recipients 
  • Tan Hook Beng was sentenced to a year in jail while his daughter got eight months' jail

SINGAPORE — A father and daughter running a family transport and logistics firm were sentenced to jail on Friday (May 12) over paying more than S$400,000 in bribes to executives from logistics giant DHL and food packager Tetra Pak so that they could retain lucrative contracts with the two firms.

Tan Hook Beng, who was the managing director of family-owned Likok Logistics up till March 2020, was sentenced to a year in jail after the 63-year-old pleaded guilty to a charge of offering bribes.

Another similar charge was taken into consideration for the sentencing of the permanent resident who is from Malaysia.

His daughter, Tan Pei Fung, was sentenced to eight months’ jail after she pleaded guilty to a single charge of intentionally aiding her father to offer bribes.

The 40-year-old Singaporean, who was Likok’s finance director up till March 2020 before she took over her father’s mantle, had another bribery-related charge taken into consideration for her sentencing.

Aside from the duo, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Sheldon Lim referred to other people who were "primary drivers” in the bribery episode that began in late 2018:

  • Chee Peng Chun, a 51-year-old Malaysian and permanent resident here. He was Likok’s general manager at the time of the offences and remained so until March 16 in 2020

  • Edmund Hoon Wai Kein, a 46-year-old Singaporean, was a senior executive at DHL Supply Chain Singapore up till June in 2020

  • Kelvin Tan, a 33-year-old Singaporean, was a senior logistics executive at Tetra Pak Jurong at the time of the alleged offences. He had used to work with Hoon

DPP Lim said that both Chee and Hoon have already been sentenced to jail.

Chee was given 40 months of jail time along with a financial penalty on March 15 this year while Hoon was sentenced to 22 months' jail along with a financial penalty on March 17 this year.

The case against Kelvin Tan is still before the courts.

AN OPPORTUNITY ARISES

The court heard that on Nov 8 in 2018, DHL was contracted to provide various logistics services to Tetra Pak.

However, because it lacked the resources to provide certain transportation services, it sought a sub-contractor to do so on its behalf.

Knowing this, Hoon from DHL told Chee from Likok about this possible transportation-related sub-contracting opportunity.

Chee, in turn, told his bosses Tan Hook Beng and Tan Pei Fung about it.

However, Chee did not disclose how he came by this information.

In the end, Tan Hook Beng gave his approval for Likok to tender for the sub-contract.

DHL’s director of transportation and distribution Yeo Yong Chay was, however, hesitant to award the contract to Likok due to the firm’s small size.

This led Chee to propose an arrangement with Hoon.

It involved DHL awarding the sub-contract to the publicly listed logistics company GKE Express.

GKE would then further award the sub-contract to Likok, in exchange for a percentage of the revenue earned from providing the transportation service.

DPP Lim said that GKE’s chief executive officer, Mr Neo Cheow Hui, who was a friend of Chee, agreed to this arrangement, as did Tan Hook Beng and his daughter.

The prosecutor said that due to DHL’s urgent need for a sub-contractor, Mr Yeo did not refer the matter to the company’s procurement team for the sourcing of alternative sub-contractors.

Instead, he directly obtained approval from DHL’s management team to award the transport sub-contract to GKE on Nov 13 in 2018.

GKE then awarded a further sub-contract to Likok for the provision of the transportation services two weeks later on Nov 26.

THE CONSPIRACY

Sometime the next month, in December 2018, Kelvin Tan from Tetra Pak, as well as Chee and Hoon, allegedly came to an agreement that lies at the heart of the case.

They agreed that they should obtain gratifications, which they referred to as commissions, from Likok as a reward for Hoon and Kelvin Tan allegedly furthering Likok’s business interests with DHL and Tetra Pak.

This included obtaining the earlier transportation sub-contract via GKE, and possibly securing two other sub-contracting opportunities from Tetra Pak via DHL that involved providing warehousing services and container-inspection and refurbishment services.

These gratifications, DPP Lim said, would be paid in the form of a percentage of the goods and services provided in the contracts to Kelvin Tan, who would then split the proceeds among the trio.

CONVINCING THE BOSS

Chee, for his part, had to convince Tan Hock Beng and his daughter in December 2018 to join the scheme by recommending that they pay the bribes to retain the transportation sub-contract and obtain the other two sub-contracts involving warehousing and container-inspection and refurbishment services.

During this meeting, Chee hid the identities of Hoon and Kelvin Tan, and simply referred to them as unnamed representatives of DHL and Tetra Pak. He also did not disclose that he would be one of the recipients of the bribes.

Tan Hock Beng agreed to the arrangement, but instructed Chee to negotiate to reduce the amount of the bribes. The three alleged bribe recipients agreed to lower the amount.

This scheme eventually led to DHL and Tetra Pak becoming one of Likok’s largest clients.

It also led to Tetra Pak’s Kelvin Tan allegedly protecting the business interests of Likok, such as when DHL wanted to terminate Likok’s services in June 2020.

Given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Kelvin Tan allegedly claimed that doing so would be disruptive to operations, and stipulated that DHL continue engaging Likok through GKE.

THE BRIBES

DPP Lim said that between July 2019 and January 2021, Tan Hook Beng and Tan Pei Fung allegedly made 19 payments totalling S$403,370.93 to Kelvin Tan, who allegedly distributed the money to Chee and Hoon as agreed.

However, Chee’s employment with Likok was terminated on March 16 in 2020, and did not receive his share of the 13th to 19th payments.

Tan Hook Beng made the first three payments from July 10 to Oct 4 in 2019.

Tan Pei Fung then made the fourth to 19th payments from Nov 9 on 2019 to Jan 13 in 2021.

ATTEMPTS TO EXTRICATE LIKOK

However, when Tan Pei Fung initially took over making the payments, she told Kelvin Tan that she would not be paying the bribes for the warehouse sub-contract, as her company was making little profit from it.

This allegedly angered Kelvin Tan, which led to Likok’s various works with Tetra Pak “meeting with a lot of trouble” such as being given many urgent requests for trucking.

Once Tan Pei Fung agreed to pay the bribes in December 2019, Tetra Pak’s requests began to proceed smoothly, DPP Lim said.

Sometime in March 2020, Tan Pei Fung again tried to make it difficult for the alleged bribe recipients by telling Kelvin Tan that she would pay him only on receiving invoices billing Likok for services rendered.

DPP Lim, who sought a jail term of between 10 and 12 months for Tan Pei Fung. said she had hoped that the recipients would stop demanding bribes of their own accord, because she was afraid that if she rejected their request outright, Kelvin Tan would make things difficult for her again.

However, Kelvin Tan and Hoon were able to find a workaround by getting another company, LH Management, to issue false invoices to Likok.

The offences were eventually discovered when Tan Pei Fung reported Chee for other unrelated alleged offences to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in June 2020.

After further investigation and questioning by the CPIB, she and her father — for whom the prosecution sought a jail term of between 12 and 14 months — admitted to the corrupt payments.

In seeking a lighter sentence for his clients, Mr Adrian Wee of Lighthouse Law, said that Tan Pei Fung had made the report to CPIB because she felt that more “drastic action” was needed to put a stop to the bribes.

She hoped that by reporting Chee for unrelated matters, it would scare his associates into terminating the scheme.

“(She) did so with the full knowledge that the CPIB’s investigations could well lead to the discovery of the scheme and her role in the same,” Mr Wee said while seeking a jail term of between three and four months for her.

“While (Tan Pei Fung) remained concerned about the survival of Likok, she had come to the realisation that she could no longer be a part of the scheme and that the scheme had to come to an end one way or another.”

As for Tan Hook Beng, for whom Mr Wee sought a jail term of four months, the lawyer said that he was neither the scheme's originator nor the “prime mover” of it.

For that reason, he said that Tan Hook Beng’s culpability should be considered as low.

For their offences, Tan Hook Beng and Tan Pei Fung could have each been jailed for up to five years or fined up to S$100,000, or both.

Related topics

court crime bribe CPIB DHL Tetra Pak

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