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Ler Teck Siang, the former doctor involved in leaking data from the HIV registry last year, has been sentenced to an additional 10 months in jail for failing to provide narcotics officers with his urine sample.
Ler, 39, also admitted a charge under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for failing to retain possession of the HIV registry, which he had access to when he was head of the National Public Health Unit.
This charge was taken into consideration during the last sentence yesterday, which marked the end of the criminal process against Ler, in case there are no more resources.
Ler had refused to provide his urine sample to narcotics officers after he was arrested with a drug abuser at the Conrad Centennial Hotel on March 2, 2018, the district court found.
Last year, he was sentenced to 15 months in jail on two charges: one for injecting drugs into abusers for a fee and the other for possessing drug devices.
This was in addition to his two-year sentence for helping his HIV-positive ex-partner, Mikhy Farrera-Brochez, of the United States, to trick authorities into giving him a work pass.
The former doctor, who was removed from the medical record earlier this year, had sought judgment on all of his charges except the OSA-related charge.
In this latest trial, Ler, who represented himself, claimed that he did not believe that the officers of the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) were giving him a “legal order” to provide the urine sample.
NO TIME FRAME
He also alleged that the agents did not give him a deadline to deliver the sample and did not tell him how much urine to produce, nor did they give him a container to do so.
Ler said he could have “just produced a drop of urine” on his pants and “would have been providing urine.”
Yesterday, District Judge Carol Ling said that if Ler refused to give a urine sample or did not give it, the fact is that no urine sample was presented to the CNB officers.
He added that his accusations at trial were just an afterthought.
Deputy Prosecutor Lu Yiwei requested 10 months in jail, saying that Ler had “openly defied” the authorities.
He had also sought trial on the charge despite having no excuse and had made up “creative excuses” for failing to provide a urine sample, DPP Lu said.
Farrera-Brochez leaked the details of 14,200 HIV-positive patients in the registry scandal online.
Last year he was sentenced to two years in prison by a US court for using the stolen HIV database to extort money from the Singaporean government.
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