SINGAPORE — Both avid cyclists, they became friends in 2011 when they met at a cycling event, and often discussed the sport.

However, when online chatter questioning a tender won by BikeHop Singapore to supply bicycles to the National Parks Board (NParks) grew too loud, NParks Assistant Director Bernard Lim Yong Soon told his friend Lawrence Lim Chun How, an owner of BikeHop, to keep quiet about their friendship and asked him to unfriend him on Facebook.

The court heard this yesterday at the start of a trial involving Lim, 42, who is fighting allegations of providing false information to officers from the Ministry of National Development (MND) who were conducting an internal audit of NParks’ controversial purchase of 26 Brompton bikes.

Lim, who was overseeing the purchase, had allegedly denied being a friend of Mr Lawrence Lim. He is also accused of asking Mr Lawrence Lim to give the same false information to the auditors.

Taking the stand as a witness against Lim, Mr Lawrence Lim said Lim had called him to alert him to a business opportunity with NParks in November 2011.

Lim told him that NParks was looking to buy 30 to 35 folding bicycles with wheels of 16 inches, that he had to register on the government electronic business portal before he could bid for the tender and to add racks to the bikes.

After some calculations, Mr Lawrence Lim decided to bid for the tender at S$2,200 per bike.

After it was reported in Lianhe Zaobao in 2012 that BikeHop had won the tender, questions arose over whether NParks got value for its money and the fact that only one vendor had responded to the tender on GeBiz — BikeHop. This led National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan to order an internal audit of the purchase.

Yesterday, Mr Lawrence Lim said he had questioned the rationale behind having to hide their friendship from Lim’s boss, but Lim said civil service culture made it tricky.

Mr Lawrence Lim admitted lying to MND officers that he did not know Lim. He came clean about their friendship after he sought advice from a friend who is a lawyer. The trial continues.