SINGAPORE — Lawyer and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Christopher de Souza was on Monday (July 31) cleared of improper professional conduct by the Court of Three Judges, which overturned an earlier finding by a disciplinary tribunal.

In a statement sent to TODAY after the decision, his lawyer Calvin Ong from WongPartnership said that Mr de Souza is "naturally extremely pleased" to be vindicated after three years.

He added that Mr de Souza had acted with "the utmost integrity" at all times and that the allegations against him were "totally unfounded".

"Mr de Souza has always been mindful of his obligations as an officer of the court."

In December, the tribunal found that Mr de Souza, had engaged in improper professional conduct by allegedly assisting his client in suppressing evidence, in the form of preparing and filing an affidavit that left out certain information.

The charge was one of five filed by the Law Society of Singapore (LawSoc) against Mr de Souza, who is a People’s Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Holland-Bukit Timah Group Representation Constituency.

The tribunal, appointed by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, had found that the other four charges were not made out.

On Monday, the Court of Three Judges comprising Justices Belinda Ang Saw Ean, Kannan Ramesh and Woo Bih Li said that it disagreed with the findings of the disciplinary tribunal, concluding that the tribunal had erred in its analysis.

The court heard legal submissions from both sides on Monday morning in a hearing to determine the outcome of the proceedings initiated by LawSoc, before adjourning to consider its decision, which was handed down at 2.30pm.

Delivering brief remarks on the decision, High Court Judge Ang said the judges believed that intention was a “necessary ingredient” of the charge, while the disciplinary tribunal had treated it as irrelevant.

She added that LawSoc had failed to establish “suppression”, which involved a multi-factor enquiry.

The Court of Three Judges will publish its full reasons for its decision that the charge had not been made out later.

The decision came at a time when the position of Speaker of Parliament is vacant after the previous incumbent Tan Chuan-Jin resigned over having an affair with an MP.

Deputy Speaker Jessica Tan Soon Neo will serve as Acting Speaker until Parliament elects a new Speaker.

BACKGROUND

The charge of improper professional conduct related to Mr de Souza’s alleged conduct while representing Amber Compounding Pharmacy and Amber Laboratories in a High Court lawsuit as a partner of Lee & Lee law firm.

Amber launched the lawsuit in February 2018 against a former employee and her new company.

Represented by a different law firm at the time, Amber applied for search orders to obtain documents and information from the defendants.

The search orders were granted by the court with the express undertaking that Amber was not to use any of the information or documents obtained except for the High Court court proceedings.

After reviewing the 116,298 documents seized, Amber thought that some of them pointed to serious criminal offences on the part of the defendants and made reports to the police, the Ministry of Manpower and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, disclosing 10 documents in all and thereby breaching its undertaking.

Around November 2018, Lee & Lee was approached to act for Amber in relation to the reports made to the authorities. The law firm’s internal correspondence allegedly showed that Mr de Souza and his team knew about the breach.

The law firm on Dec 5 that year advised Amber to take immediate steps to remedy it.

The five charges brought by LawSoc against Mr de Souza arose from actions allegedly taken between Dec 3, 2018 and Jan 28, 2019.

Among other things, they alleged that Mr de Souza knowingly misled or tried to mislead the court and opposing counsel, by failing to inform the court of Amber's prior breaches of undertakings not to disclose certain documents.

The fourth charge, which the tribunal had upheld, alleged that Mr de Souza was a party to and assisted Amber in suppressing evidence.

This was allegedly done in preparing and filing an affidavit by the company’s representative, which did not exhibit reports and supporting documents that would have otherwise revealed Amber’s breach of the undertaking.

The tribunal said in its earlier decision that Mr de Souza “was insistent” that his client made full disclosure.

“However, given the respondent’s admitted cognisance of the importance of full and frank disclosure, his failure to ensure that such disclosure was made is not exculpated by the conduct of the client,” the tribunal said in its findings in December.

The tribunal stated that its role was to assess whether essential elements of the charge had been made out and that the matter "must go forward to the Court of Three Judges" once the threshold of cause of sufficient gravity is crossed. This led to Monday's hearing.

After finding that one of the charges against Mr de Souza had been made out, the tribunal ordered him to pay costs of S$18,000 to LawSoc, as well as the society's reasonable disbursements.

LAWSOC’S ARGUMENTS

LawSoc, represented by Mr Madan Assomull of Assomull & Partners, asked on Monday for Mr de Souza to be suspended from legal practice for four years.

He argued that correspondence between Mr de Souza’s team and his client when preparing the affidavit showed that the latter was aware of the breach of undertaking.

This showed that Mr de Souza recognised the need for the client to come clean with the courts, but when “push came to shove”, he did not allow the disclosure to take place in the affidavit filed, Mr Assomull alleged.

He also argued that after Amber had committed the breach and Mr de Souza had taken the case, Mr de Souza filed an application with the courts only for a prospective use of the seized documents to file reports to the authorities.

There was a “considered” decision made not to include the reports and supporting documents in the application to the court, which would have otherwise made clear that Amber had committed the breach of undertaking, he added.

The wordings of the application did not make clear that it was retrospective in nature — meaning to say that Amber had already used the documents to file reports to the authority and belatedly sought the court’s permission to do so.

CHRISTOPHER DE SOUZA’S CASE

Mr Tan Chee Meng of WongPartnership LLP, acting for Mr de Souza, argued on Monday that there was no intent on his client’s part to assist Amber in suppressing evidence.

He pointed to internal correspondence among the Lee & Lee team when reviewing the affidavit drafts where, among other things, Mr de Souza had noted the “incorrect impression” that Amber had made when suggesting edits to the draft.

In response to a query from the bench, Mr Tan conceded that the affidavit could have been more clearly worded.

However, the lawyer said it was a “quantum leap that is totally unjustified” to conclude from that to say that his client had the intention to deceive or to suppress evidence.

Speaking after Mr Tan, Mr Assomull said that if the court were to take a position that a lawyer can get away with bad drafting every time, “we’re going to have a lot of problems in the future”.

He also alleged that it was not a case of bad drafting, because the vague language did not only appear once but multiple times in the court documents.

However, the Court of Three Judges rejected these arguments and found that the charge had not been made out.

In her brief comments, High Court Judge Ang said on Monday that LawSoc was required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mr de Souza's alleged omissions were intentional for the purpose of suppressing evidence, but the disciplinary tribunal had treated the question of intent as irrelevant.

The court also found that "contemporaneous evidence" had shown that Mr de Souza and team had consistently intended to make disclosure of their client's breach and had stuck to the intention "in the face of an intransigent client", she added.

In his statement after the hearing, Mr de Souza's lawyer said: "The Court of Three Judges held that Mr de Souza did not intend to suppress Amber’s breaches... (he) would like to thank his colleagues at Lee & Lee, friends and constituents for their unstinting support and encouragement during this time.”

In response to TODAY's queries, PAP said that the party was "very happy" that Mr de Souza had been "fully acquitted".

"The party has always believed in the due process of law, and upholds the high standards of integrity expected of our MPs."