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SINGAPORE – The High Court rejected a request by lawyer and leader of the Peoples Voice political party, Lim Tean, for the police to drop two investigations against him.
Lim had claimed that the investigations were politically motivated and that the police and the Department of Commercial Affairs (CAD) had colluded against him.
But on Tuesday (December 8), Judge Ang Cheng Hock said in a written judgment that he found no evidence to support the claim.
“At the conclusion of the hearing, I dismissed the plaintiff’s request because it had no merit and provided the parties with brief reasons for my decision,” he added.
Lim is being investigated by CAD, the white collar crime unit of the police force, for alleged criminal breach of trust under the Penal Code.
He is charged with the misappropriation of S $ 30,000 that he received from an insurance company on behalf of a former client for a motor accident claim.
Mr. Lim is also under investigation for an alleged crime of illegal stalking under the Protection from Harassment Act (POHA). The author claimed that he had invited her to dinner and drinks at his home, and persistently addressed her using inappropriate terms such as “honey” and “baby” even after she told him that she was uncomfortable with it.
The head of the Peoples Voice party was arrested in his office on October 2 after he failed to cooperate with police investigations.
In his request on October 20, he tried to prohibit investigating officer Hannah Cheong of the Central Police Division from continuing the POHA investigations, as she claimed she was in “collusion” with CAD investigating officer Desmond Toh.
The two officers had telephoned him together on September 23, asking him to come to the CAD office for an interview about the two alleged crimes.
Lim also requested a mandatory order against the two agencies to stop both investigations, since “the whole process” is “irreversibly tainted with partiality due to the collusion and the harmful way” in which they have been treated, according to the written sentence.
In his sentencing, Judge Ang said that the police have a duty under the Criminal Procedure Code to investigate crimes, and Mr. Lim had not shown that the police acted in bad faith or against the Constitution.
It also noted that Mr. Lim’s claims about collusion between the two investigators were not supported, calling his claims “scant or vague.”
“It was not entirely clear to me what this alleged collusion involved, apart from the argument that collusion was said to be proven by the mere fact that the two officers made a phone call to the plaintiff on September 23, 2020,” he said Justice. Ang.
He said that Mr. Lim had provided nothing more than a simple statement with no supporting details or evidence, nor could his lawyer explain what legal effect the alleged collusion had on the investigations.
On the other hand, the two officers explained that they planned to interview Mr. Lim on the same date for convenience, as the CAD and the Central Division are located at the Police Cantonment Complex on New Bridge Road.
While Mr. Lim claimed that the investigations were “politically motivated”, he did not provide evidence of this, Judge Ang noted.
The Superior Court judge also addressed his complaints that the police reports are false or unfounded, or that there are doubts about the credibility of the complainant, saying that it would be precisely in his interest to formally deliver his statement to the two agencies to explain his version of the events.
“The police cannot – and, in fact, should not – simply ignore a police report solely because the person under investigation has raised claims through the attorney that the police report is unfounded,” the judge said, adding that the The purpose of investigations is to establish whether a police report is founded or not, and whether crimes have been committed.
“If the declaration of innocence of a person or the accusations of bad faith on the part of the complainant are sufficient to justify that the Court order the cessation of police investigations, it would flout the powers and procedures for criminal investigations established in the Code of Criminal Procedure Code). “
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