Workers’ Party chairman Sylvia Lim ‘colluded with FMSS’ in 2012 managing agent tender: Lawyer

SINGAPORE — Less than 10 minutes after notifying the tenders and contracts committee of Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) about an interview with FM Solutions and Services (FMSS), Workers’ Party (WP) chairman Sylvia Lim tipped the firm off about the need to explain its higher rates.

Senior Counsel (SC) Davinder Singh, who is representing the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council (PRPTC), charged on Wednesday (Oct 24) that the two parties had “colluded” and put up a “charade” which allowed FMSS to come “fully prepared to defend their pricing” during the tender interview two days later on June 21, 2012.

He also charged that Ms Lim had gone behind the backs of her fellow town councillors and external audit firm RSM Ethos by giving FMSS “insider information”, and encouraging them to provide more details at the meeting. This resulted in FMSS co-owner Danny Loh delivering an 11-slide presentation to some of the AHTC members on FMSS’ pricing strategy.

Ms Lim, two fellow WP Members of Parliament (MPs), and two councillors are being sued by PRPTC and an independent panel acting on behalf of AHTC, for alleged improper payments to FMSS and other third-party service providers. 

FMSS, which was first appointed in 2011 after a one-year waiver of tender, was the only firm that submitted a bid for the tender to be AHTC’s managing agent a year later.

In her email on June 19, 2012, Lim — who was then AHTC's chairperson — had told WP MPs Pritam Singh and Faisal Manap, as well as town councillors Chua Zhi Hon and Anthony Teo, to note the increase in FMSS’ asking rates. While previous agent CPG Facilities Management had charged an average of slightly more than S$6 for each equivalent public housing unit in 2011, FMSS’ proposed rate was S$7.

She said in her email that FMSS’ rate was on the higher end of the spectrum from what the People’s Action Party-run town councils were paying their managing agents, which she understood to be between S$6 and S$7 per equivalent dwelling unit.

Minutes later, she sent an email to FMSS owners How Weng Fan and her late husband Loh to give them a “heads up” to explain why its tender was “at the higher end”. This email was not copied to other members of the tenders and contract committee, nor declared to RSM Ethos, which AHTC had hired to review the integrity and transparency of the tender process to help in their evaluation.

SC Singh noted that Mr Teo had raised questions about FMSS’ costs, as he asked via email if they were “having trouble breaking even, or are they purely profit driven?” Ms Lim replied that it was a good question that should be asked at the tender interview.

Charging that this was a “set up” between Ms Lim, Loh and Ms How, SC Singh said: “It was a charade. These people had been given a tip-off, insider information so they could come prepared and knowing what the question would be, to overcome the one difficulty that you knew the committee had about (the bid), correct?”

Ms Lim disagreed, stating that she sent the email as she wanted FMSS to come prepared, "so the meeting could be productive”.

When asked if she would give each bidder a heads-up on questions for the interview in the case of a competitive tender, Ms Lim said she would have treated them on an “even keel”.

SC Singh then charged that the tender process was “tainted, flawed”, and that she “colluded with FMSS to make sure that FMSS would come prepared with everything that was needed to secure that bid”.

When Ms Lim disagreed, he pointed to a “classic example” in which she had lied, saying that she had also done so in court, and to her own town council members.

He brought up her response to Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam in a parliamentary debate in February 2015, when she said there was disclosure of the direct ownership interest of FMSS. She had testified in court on Tuesday that there was no such disclosure.

SC Singh said: “I suggest to you (that) someone as artful as you knowingly breached your fiduciary duties, your duties as a trustee, your duties under the law, just to get your way.”

Ms Lim replied: “I acted in good faith at all times.”

This prompted SC Singh to add: “If this is good faith, then all of us in Singapore are in big trouble.”

PROTECTING PUBLIC MONIES NOT A PRIORITY

Before wrapping up his cross-examination of Ms Lim, he asked about her approval process for invoices issued for routine works completed.

When she said her “general process” entailed checking if sums tallied with the cheque amounts, SC Singh summed up his argument over the five-day cross-examination of Ms Lim by stating that she had “abdicated (her) entire role to conflicted persons (at FMSS)”.

He said: “You have conflicted persons who were verifying the work. You relied on conflicted persons to verify the work, on amounts payable, and all you did according to your own (affidavit) is that you check whether the sums tallied,” he said.

“I suggest to you that having regard to the way you behave right through this process, the question of the protection and safeguarding of (public) monies was never uppermost in your mind.” Lim replied that it was false.

She also put on record that she disagreed with the assertions made in the audit reports prepared by audit firms KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

QUESTION LEFT UNANSWERED

In his re-examination of Ms Lim on her final day in court as a defence witness, her lawyer Chelva Rajah locked horns with SC Singh over whether a question on how many AHTC town councillors there are could be asked.

Mr Rajah had wanted to ask his client this so that he could clarify SC Singh’s point about Ms Lim and fellow elected MPs misleading AHTC town councillors due to their desperation to appoint FMSS.

But SC Singh immediately rose to object. “That is not a clarification of an answer,” he said.

While Mr Rajah said the number of town councillors was a relevant matter, SC Singh countered that it was “not the test” in his cross-examination.

After a protracted argument, Justice Kannan Ramesh then ruled that there were grounds for SC Singh to object, leaving the question unanswered.

WP chief Pritam Singh will take the stand on Thursday.