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SINGAPORE – A director of a company dealing with metal and electricity outsourcing work has become the first person here to be sent to jail for giving false information to the Singapore Internal Revenue Authority (Iras).
For his crimes, Law Yu Hong, who was a director of a company called Ho Sin, was sentenced on Friday (December 18) to 10 days in jail and a $ 5,000 fine.
He was also ordered to pay a fine of $ 38,400, which is double the amount he had fraudulently tried to obtain from a scheme involving a government productivity plan.
The 53-year-old Singaporean had previously admitted that he had given Iras false information during the course of the investigations.
He also admitted to having been an accessory to Ho Sin by providing false information to the Income Tax Comptroller on his application form for a cash payment for the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme.
The initiative was introduced in 2010 to encourage Singaporean companies to invest in productivity and innovation.
The scheme, which ended in 2018, offered tax deductions or cash payments to companies that made genuine investments to improve productivity and innovation, such as investing in staff training, information technology or automation equipment.
Law’s case is related to Ng Cheow Chai, 47, who was the managing director of equipment wholesaler SMS Machinery at the time of the crimes. Ng was also the mastermind behind the largest fraud case related to the PIC scheme.
Ng had helped 83 companies file fraudulent claims to the scheme between March 2013 and July 2016, seeking payments of $ 2.7 million to which they were not entitled.
He was sentenced to 46 months in jail in March and ordered to pay a fine of $ 5.75 million, four times the amount of the improperly obtained payments.
He has to spend another 31½ months behind bars if he cannot pay the amount.
The court heard that Law had previously contacted Ng to purchase a shear machine for Ho Sin.
Prosecutor Irene Kuek of Iras said: “Subsequently, (Ng) presented the defendant with a proposal to submit an inflated PIC claim to Iras to obtain a higher PIC cash payment so that (Ho Sin) would not have to pay a only penny for the new machine. The defendant agreed with the proposal. “
In a statement on Friday, Iras said that as part of the ruse, Ho Sin forged business documents to create a false transaction between himself and Ng’s business.
Then a form was submitted in 2016 falsely stating that the machine cost $ 80,000 when its actual price was $ 48,000.
The payment was not disbursed after an audit and Iras launched an investigation against Law. He later lied during the investigation, claiming that the transaction was genuine.
An offender convicted of abusing the PIC scheme can be jailed for up to five years and fined up to $ 50,000. The violator will also have to pay a fine of up to four times the amount of the fraudulently obtained cash payment.
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