Nursery supplier sentenced to 5 months' jail for bribing company director with S$143,000

SINGAPORE — A man who had bribed the director of a landscaping and plant nursery company with S$143,000 was sentenced to five months' jail on Friday (April 26).

Loo Nee Soon, 62, the director and shareholder of garden centre Sinflora, was found guilty of eight counts of offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act last month.

He intends to appeal the sentence and is out on a S$150,000 bail.

Between 2008 and 2010, Loo wrote eight cheques with values ranging from S$10,000 to S$30,000 to Albert Geow Chwee Hiam, who was the director of Island Landscape and Nursery.

Sinflora is one of Island Landscape’s suppliers for plants and products.

The court heard that Loo had bribed Geow because he had wanted more business from him.

During the period when this took place, the yearly sales volume from Sinflora to Island Landscape averaged about S$373,000.

This was higher compared with the average yearly sales of about S$215,400 from 2003 to 2007.

During the trial, Loo said that he had lent the money to Geow, 69, who was a family friend of more than 30 years.

At that time, the defence told the court that this was why Loo had agreed to lend large sums of money to Geow without expecting repayment.

However, the prosecution argued that Loo had told investigation officers that he and Geow were “just okay friends”.

The prosecution also said that Loo and his wife each owned 50 per cent of Sinflora shares and stood to gain from bribing Geow to boost their business.

Geow was jailed eight months in 2016 after pleading guilty to three charges of corruption.

UPDATE: Following a High Court appeal in July 2020, the five-month jail term meted out to Loo was revised to a fine of S$286,000, according to his lawyers.