More jail time for mastermind of scheme to cheat Auditor-General’s Office over Singapore Prison Service audit

• Loo Yew Tek was convicted after a trial and sentenced to 14 months’ jail
• He was sentenced to another 15 months on Thursday for additional charges
• Both sentences were for cheating the Auditor-General’s Office during an audit of the Singapore Prison Service
• He and several others, including prison employees, submitted 126 forged documents
• This was to cover up overcharging of SPS by Loo’s company

SINGAPORE — Already sentenced to 14 months’ jail for conspiring to submit forged quotations to the Auditor-General’s Office (AGO), Loo Yew Tek was handed another 15-month jail term on Thursday (April 8) over the same scheme.

Loo had teamed up with several others to cheat the AGO, which is tasked with checking that public monies are properly spent, during the financial year 2010 audit of the Singapore Prison Service (SPS).

The men submitted 126 forged documents to replace previous forgeries and cover up civil engineering contractor Thong Huat Brothers’ overcharging of SPS for various items.

The exact monetary loss caused by the overcharging could not be ascertained as they had destroyed all the original documents.

At the time of their offences from July 2011 to March 2012, Loo — now aged 50 — was a senior project manager with Thong Huat Brothers and a director of general contractor Innova Developments.

The others involved in the scheme were two SPS employees from the infrastructure development branch, two project managers from Boon Yong Electrical, and five managers from CPG Facilities Management.

After a trial, Loo, a Singaporean, was convicted and jailed for 14 months over 16 charges of conspiring to use forged documents.

On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to another 30 similar charges, with 88 other charges — eight of these relating to a separate fraud — taken into consideration for sentencing. He was then sentenced to 15 more months’ jail.

He began serving his newest sentence immediately, which runs concurrently with the balance of his previous jail term. As he has already served four months behind bars, this effectively means a 19-month jail term in total.

WHAT HAPPENED

The court heard that the scheme was uncovered in April 2012, after AGO reviewed the submitted forged documents and highlighted several lapses to SPS’ management on the procurement process.

The AGO had launched an audit in July 2011, asking SPS for documents on certain works performed by Thong Huat under a three-year contract with the Ministry of Home Affairs.

CPG Facilities Management, on behalf of SPS, managed all works awarded under the contract.

As the main contractor, Thong Huat had to call for quotations from potential subcontractors and submit claims for goods and services.

For certain claims, Thong Huat needed to submit supporting documents, such as quotations and documentary evidence of how much Thong Huat paid to the subcontractor.

But when AGO asked for these documents for audit purposes, CPG Facilities Management said they did not have a complete set of them.

They were missing due to “supervision lapses by CPG Facilities Management and SPS because they failed to ensure that the required documents were duly submitted by Thong Huat”, prosecutors told the court.

Loo then called for a meeting, which several of the conspirators attended. They included the SPS employees, Chew Tee Seng and Tang Keng Lai.

Loo suggested that backdated quotations be issued in Thong Huat’s name to cover up previous forgeries and overcharging by the firm. They also discarded all the lowest subcontractors’ quotations that were previously submitted to SPS.

Because of this, there was no way for AGO to trace who the original subcontractors were or fully determine how much losses SPS suffered as a result.

Aside from stating that Thong Huat was the lowest bidder, some of the fake quotations were also issued in the subcontractors’ names.

In May 2012, Chew, on behalf of SPS, lodged a police report over the forged documents. Subsequent investigations by the police’s Commercial Affairs Department then brought the scheme to light.

PRIME MOVER AND MASTERMIND

Deputy Public Prosecutors (DPPs) Tan Hsiao Tien, Suhas Malhotra and Nicholas Khoo sought the sentence imposed, arguing that Loo was the “prime mover” and “mastermind” of the scheme.

“He was motivated by self-interest and greed… Clearly, he has benefitted from the overcharging and would stand to gain from this entire fraud,” DPP Tan told the court.

The prosecutors also noted that the plot was hatched based on Loo’s previous dealings with AGO on other projects, and to “specifically circumvent the AGO auditors’ persistence in requiring all relevant documents for audit purposes”.

“(His) actions show that the offences were not committed on the spur of the moment, but were premeditated and carefully planned over a period of time,” they added.

While Loo pleaded guilty, DPP Tan noted that he had no other choice as all his defences had been “fully canvassed” during the trial and when he appealed against his conviction and 14-month jail sentence.

The High Court dismissed the appeals late last year, with Justice Hoo Sheau Peng saying that the sentence was “slightly on the lower side”.

For each charge of using as genuine a forged document, Loo could have been jailed for up to four years or fined, or punished with both.