Karl Liew pleaded guilty to one charge of giving false information to a public servant. - ST
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): Karl Liew, the son of Changi Airport Group’s former chairman Liew Mun Leong, admitted to lying to a district judge in the case involving his family’s former maid, Parti Liyani, who was accused of stealing from his family.
The 45-year-old pleaded guilty on Thursday (March 30) to one charge of giving false information to a public servant.
Karl Liew, who has Parkinson’s disease – a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to muscle tremors and difficulty in walking and balancing – will be sentenced on April 14.
Parti, now 49, started working as a maid in his household in March 2007.
The Indonesian was asked in March 2016 to do chores at his home as well as clean his office at another location.
She was unhappy about being made to do extra work.
The Liew family terminated her employment in October 2016, and she was given two hours to pack her belongings into three boxes.
Parti threatened to lodge a complaint with the Ministry of Manpower before returning to Indonesia.
She had asked Liew to pay for the boxes to be shipped to her. The day after she left, the Liew family opened the boxes.
A police report was made, claiming that some of the items she had packed in the boxes belonged to the family.
Parti was arrested when she returned to Singapore in December 2016 to find work.
She was later charged with multiple counts of theft and was tried before District Judge Olivia Low from April 2018 to March 2019.
One of these charges alleged that she had stolen items with a total value of S$46,856. They included 120 pieces of clothing that were valued at $150 each.
Among them were a cream polo T-shirt and a red blouse.
Liew was called as a prosecution witness during the trial and Parti’s pro bono lawyer, Anil Balchandani, cross-examined him.
On July 17, 2018, Liew falsely testified that the cream polo T-shirt and the red blouse belonged to him.
Judge Low later amended the charge on March 20, 2019, removing from it five articles of clothing, including the T-shirt and the blouse. She found that the two garments did not belong to Liew.
Parti was convicted of stealing more than $30,000 worth of items from the Liews and was sentenced in 2019 to two years and two months in jail.
She was acquitted after the High Court overturned her conviction on appeal in 2020.
The High Court ruled that the original conviction was unsafe, highlighting the police’s handling of the evidence.
In February 2022 the media reported that two police officers who were involved in Parti’s case had neglected their duties and fallen short of expectations.
Both officers were fined, and the penalties were calculated through the number of months of salary increments forgone, said Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam on Feb 14, 2022. He was giving Parliament an update on the internal investigations of the case.
Shanmugam said both the investigation officer (IO) and his supervisor had neglected their duties, resulting in three lapses.
The first was that the IO did not visit the crime scene to promptly carry out investigations and gather evidence, contributing to a break in the chain of custody of some exhibits.
The second was that the IO did not properly verify some of the claims made by the parties during the investigation.
The third lapse was the supervisor not providing sufficient guidance.
The minister said the officers had done their jobs under difficult circumstances, facing workload challenges due to a manpower shortage in the police force.
He said both officers faced penalties in the medium range.
On Thursday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Kelvin Chong urged the court to sentence Liew to the maximum fine of $5,000.
He told District Judge Eugene Teo: “We note that (Judge Low) did not... convict (Parti) of the theft of the cream polo T-shirt and the red blouse based on the accused’s testimony.”
The DPP added that he is aware that Liew has Parkinson’s disease and the condition affects the impact that a jail sentence will have on him.
Defence lawyer Adam Maniam, who agreed with the fine, said that Liew was diagnosed three weeks before testifying at Parti’s trial.
For giving false information to a public servant, an offender can be jailed for up two years, fined or both.
