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SINGAPORE – A sales consultant for a company that provided immigration advisory services and her mother, a customer service officer with the Immigration and Control Points Authority (ACI), were jailed Tuesday (October 27) for corruption. .
Sharon Loo Wai Woon, 29, and her mother Lucy Teo, 50, had accepted a $ 1,500 bribe from Fenny Tey Hui Nee, a 25-year-old Malaysian, to expedite her request for public relations with the ICA.
Loo was jailed for six weeks and had to pay a fine of $ 1,500, while her mother was jailed for 18 weeks.
After initially trying to claim a trial, Loo and Teo pleaded guilty to their charges Monday.
Teo pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining a bribe from Tey and five counts of conducting unauthorized checks on the ICA system. Another 12 charges for conducting such examinations and one for accepting bribes were taken into consideration for sentencing.
Loo pleaded guilty to one of the two counts of corruptly obtaining a bribe from Tey, and the other count was up for sentencing.
They had pleaded guilty to one count under the Prevention of Corruption Act and were imprisoned for four weeks on June 29 this year.
Loo was then a sales consultant at Immigration Solutions (Singapore) (ISS), whom Tey approached in July 2017 for help. He inquired about the immigration consulting services offered by the firm on its website, as he wanted to apply for permanent resident status in Singapore.
As an ICA customer service officer, Teo handled public inquiries about passports, visas, and public relations requests at the information desk. It would also issue ticket numbers to members of the public and run the inquiry hotline. It was intercepted by ICA on December 19, 2018.
Loo attended to Tey and informed him that the firm charged $ 5,000, which Tey thought was exorbitant. After that, they did not hire the services of the ISS.
Instead, he enlisted Loo’s help on a personal basis in hopes of obtaining a lower rate. After discussing the issue with Teo, Loo told Tey that he had “a cousin” working at ICA who could help expedite his PR application and that the service would cost $ 1,500.
He added that “the cousin” had advanced access to the electronic appointment booking slots and had helped many foreigners to apply for public relations status successfully.
In September and October 2017, Teo and Tey agreed to meet on several occasions. During these times, Tey paid Teo in cash and provided supporting documents for his PR request.
On October 13, 2017, Tey went to the ICA to present documents for the PR request. Then, Teo gave Tey an ICA form that she had filled out. He also provided a file with the documents needed to apply and helped her get a queue number before Tey arrived so she didn’t have to wait long.
After the bribe was delivered, Tey often asked Teo about the status of his PR request. Teo would then use his account in ICA’s Central Identification and Registration Information System (CIRIS) to check the progress of Tey’s application, although he was not authorized to do so.
Teo also conducted unauthorized checks on other people 20 times between May 25 and October 30, 2018.
This included Teo going into the system to obtain her husband’s passport number in order to book ferry tickets on his behalf, and using the same system to help his brother-in-law verify the PR requests of his colleagues.
On October 23, 2018, Teo approached a subordinate to check what a particular status meant in the system and told him that he was checking a friend’s PR status after the friend’s request. Teo’s superior was alerted and ICA management was notified.
The superior suspected that something was wrong because the status was intended to be inside information and was not supposed to be disclosed to outsiders.
ICA then conducted an internal audit on Teo’s CIRIS account and discovered the unauthorized assessments.
Tey’s PR request was finally approved and she became PR on November 9, 2018.
Since then, Loo has spent the money on daily bills and expenses.
In convicting mother and daughter, a district judge found that both had no prior convictions and pleaded guilty. The judge noted that while Teo had abused his position at ICA, he did not hold a high-level position overseeing critical functions.
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