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SINGAPORE – Entertainment artist Jaime Teo Chai-lin will be sentenced next month for failing to prevent Twelve Cupcakes, a local confectionery chain she co-founded, from paying its foreign staff less.
District Judge Adam Nakhoda on Thursday (February 25) postponed the case until March 9 after hearing arguments from both the Labor Ministry (MOM) prosecutor and Teo’s legal team.
The former model had pleaded guilty on February 4 to 10 counts of the crime under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act. Another 14 charges will be considered during sentencing.
On Thursday, MOM prosecutor Maximilian Chew urged the court to sentence Teo to a fine of $ 80,000, emphasizing that such crimes were difficult to detect and that she had not reinstated.
Teo, 43, had founded the company in 2011 with her then-husband, 45-year-old ex-radio DJ Daniel Ong Ming Yu. The couple jointly decided to hire foreign workers in 2012.
Between 2013 and 2016, the company paid less than seven employees: four customer service executives, two sales executives and a pastry chef.
For example, the pastry chef, who was supposed to receive a monthly salary of $ 2,300 in mid-2014, received $ 1,600.
The chef continued to earn lower monthly salaries from then until mid-2016.
The other six foreigners also received less money than they were supposed to receive during the time the couple owned the business.
Arrears in wages totaling $ 98,900, from the years the company was owned by him, remain outstanding to date.
Later, Teo and Ong sold the company to Calcutta-based company Dhunseri Group for $ 2.5 million in 2016.
Teo’s lawyers, Sunil Sudheesan and Diana Ngiam, pleaded Thursday for Teo to be fined $ 20,000.
They said their client never played a decision-making role in the human resources (HR) side of the business when she was a director of Twelve Cupcakes.
“As one of the two co-signers of the company, our client would receive a folder of documents from the different departments with tabs in which he had to place his signature … our client was told that the documents were for administrative purposes “they added.
According to the lawyers, Teo did not know at the time that there were differences between the wage amounts declared in the employment contracts and the actual amounts that the workers received.
“Therefore, our client placed his signature on these documents without reading them carefully. Our client agrees that he should have been more meticulous in this regard.
“The lack of knowledge of our client in the HR aspects of the company unfortunately meant that she did not detect and intervene to correct the irregularities,” said the lawyers.
Ong, who faces 24 charges under the law, postponed his case until March 2.
Twelve Cupcakes, under current owner Dhunseri Group, was convicted on December 10 last year on 15 counts of underpaying seven foreign employees in 2017 and 2018.
The confectionery was fined $ 119,500 on January 12.
For each count under the law, an offender can be jailed for up to one year and fined up to $ 10,000.
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