SINGAPORE: A sales manager of an interior furnishing firm who gave bribes of more than S$52,000 to a former St Joseph’s Institution (SJI) facilities manager was sentenced to jail on Wednesday (Sept 23).
Renee Song Mui Kuan, 54, pleaded guilty to two charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act and was sentenced to three months and two weeks in jail. Two similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Song paid the bribes to Ng Cher Him after he proposed the arrangement in exchange for securing more contracts for her company with SJI.
Song agreed as she was afraid that if she rejected him, he would stop awarding jobs to her firm, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Maximilian Chew.
Ng, 59, was sentenced to one year, three months and four weeks in jail in October 2025 after admitting to four charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
He was also handed a penalty of $7,500.
Ng resigned from SJI on Nov 2, 2023.
As facilities manager, he had a substantial degree of influence in the procurement process for facilities-related goods and services in SJI, said the prosecutor.
He would get the vendors to mark up their quotations submitted to SJI for the jobs and projects, with the mark-ups paid to him.
Ng would tell the vendors SJI’s budget for the project, share competitors’ bids for the project, then recommend that the school award the project to the vendors who bribed him. Ng told vendors to pay him in cash to avoid any paper trail.
Unfair business advantage
In January 2018, Ng approached Song and broached the idea of her paying him in exchange for his assistance in awarding more jobs to her firm.
After she agreed, Ng would inform Song of the school’s projects and instruct her to increase her quotations for the jobs. The mark-up would then be paid to Ng in cash.
On occasions when Ng did not specify the mark-up, Song would decide on the amount, inflate the quoted price and pay the mark-up to Ng in cash.
The prosecutor said that on 10 occasions from January 2019 to July 2020, Song gave Ng $18,420 in bribes.
On another 12 occasions between August 2020 and September 2022, Song handed Ng $34,480 in bribes.
The offences came to light on Sept 30, 2022, when the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) received information on Ng’s acts and investigated him.
Seeking a jail term of between 3½ months and 4½ months, the prosecutor noted the unfair advantage Song had over others.
He said: “Other vendors who might have been more suitable or able to give more competitive prices lost opportunities to secure these jobs and projects.”
Urging the court to impose a jail term of not more than three months, defence lawyers Josephus Tan, Cory Wong and Devlin Mohyong from Invictus Law Corporation said Song played a subordinate role in the corrupt transactions as she neither conceived nor initiated the arrangement.
“She agreed to the arrangement because she feared that (Ng) would otherwise stop awarding or recommending work to her businesses. Her motive was therefore shaped by the commercial pressure created by the person who controlled her businesses’ access to work at SJI,” said the lawyers.
To report corruption to CPIB, visit its website or call its hotline on 1800-376-0000.
You can also e-mail report@cpib.gov.sg or visit or write to CPIB Headquarters at 2 Lengkok Bahru, Singapore 159047. - The Straits Times/ANN
