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SINGAPORE: A former rehab center employee was sentenced to 11 weeks in jail and fined S $ 980 on Friday (September 11) for taking bribes from rehab residents in exchange for leniency when they broke the rules.
Roy Evan Rajoo, 60, was indicted on 20 counts under the Prevention of Corruption Act on June 3.
The crimes were committed between November 2018 and May 2019, when Roy Evan was an operations staff at Teen Challenge (Singapore) (TCS). The rehabilitation center provides rehabilitation to inmates of the Singapore Prison Service assigned to community programs.
“Their duty was to monitor residents and ensure that they do not violate the Teen Challenge (Singapore) rules that prohibit the consumption and possession of cigarettes and alcohol during their stay,” the Corrupt Practices Investigation Office (CPIB) said in a Press release. .
His scope of work included conducting breathalyzer and smoking tests on residents when they returned from work or visits, and submitting an incident report if there had been any violations.
CPIB discovered that it had received S $ 3,000 bribes in the form of loans from 12 residents. In return, they would not run the required tests or stop filing incident reports when caught breaking the rules.
ACCUSED ACCEPTED BRIBES BACK PLEASE
The bribes ranged from S $ 10 to S $ 500, according to court documents.
In one case, Roy Evan had caught a resident smoking in December 2018. He told the resident that he would let him go without an incident warning, but that he should return the favor.
A few days later, he asked the resident for a loan of S $ 250. In January 2019, he asked the resident for another loan of S $ 250.
In May of that year, Roy Evan confiscated four packets of cigarettes from another resident’s bag when the latter returned from a medical appointment and filed an incident report. When the resident offered him S $ 50 in exchange for letting him go, he refused because there was a closed circuit television nearby.
However, when the resident later asked him to speak well to the center’s assistant director to “alleviate any fines” he might receive for the cigarette packs, Roy Evan borrowed S $ 70 in return. The resident agreed and gave him S $ 80.
Court documents showed that he has reimbursed five of the residents the amounts owed to them.
“The actions of the defendants perverted the purpose of TCS, which was to rehabilitate ex-criminals,” the prosecution said.
“By corruptly extracting gratification from residents in exchange for essentially allowing them to disobey TCS rules, the defendants encouraged the very attitudes that residents should reject.
“This undermines the perception of TCS as a rehabilitation institution in the eyes of its residents, if not in the eyes of the general public.”
Anyone convicted of a corruption offense could be jailed for up to five years, fined up to S $ 100,000, or both.
