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SINGAPORE – The Supreme Court has acquitted a Filipino domestic worker who was jailed for 12 months by a district judge for stealing her 89-year-old employer’s ATM cards and withdrawing a total of $ 8,000 from her bank accounts.
Portela Vilma Jiménez, now 50, was convicted of 10 counts of theft by District Judge Jasvender Kaur earlier this year, for stealing two ATM cards belonging to Mr. Yong Choon Hiong and making eight unsuccessful withdrawals. $ 1,000 authorized each of your bank accounts.
The withdrawals, which were captured on CCTV footage, were made six times between January 13, 2017 and February 8, 2017. Seven transactions involved Yong’s United Overseas Bank ATM card and one was made with your POSB ATM card.
Both the prosecution and the defense did not dispute that the withdrawals had taken place.
But Deputy Prosecutor Sia Jiazheng said Jiménez had done so without Yong’s knowledge after stealing the ATM cards.
His attorneys, Suang Wijaya and Syazana Yahya, said he was allowed to make the withdrawals in exchange for sexual favors given to his elderly employer.
High Court Judge Chua Lee Ming, who heard the appeal and overturned the conviction, has not issued a written judgment.
But Ms. Jiménez’s attorneys said that Judge Chua disagreed that the prosecution had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Yong did not provide her with the ATM cards.
Ms. Jiménez, who had worked in Singapore and Kuwait for 20 years, was working for Mr. Yong and his wife from December 2015 to April 2017.
Since Mr. Yong’s wife suffers from dementia and was in a wheelchair, Ms. Jiménez had access to the couple’s room so that she could care for the old woman at night.
The DPP said that this was how he was able to remove Mr. Yong’s ATM card from his wallet, which he left in a drawer overnight.
The DPP also said that Jiménez would have known Yong’s personal identification number, which was the same for both cards, as he often went shopping with the elderly couple and would have seen him dial the numbers when making payments.
Yong had said that he first discovered the unauthorized withdrawals from his account when he received his January 2017 bank statements in February of that year.
He said he had gone to the UOB in early February to ask the bank about the matter and filed complaints on February 21 during a visit to open a joint account with his son.
He made a police report the next day, as he was told that he would not be able to see the CCTV footage without one.
However, Mr. Wijaya and Ms. Syazana questioned Mr. Yong’s version of events. They said that he had swiped his ATM card and written his PIN number on a piece of paper for Ms. Jiménez, so that she could withdraw money in exchange for sexual favors.
They claimed that Mr. Yong had agreed to pay her $ 500 each time she allowed him to touch her breasts and crotch, and that they paid him four times for this.
They also said that Mr. Yong had made a police report because he had lied to his family about the unauthorized removals after they found out.
In court, Ms. Jiménez said that Mr. Yong had also agreed to pay her twice for sexual intercourse, although it did not happen in the end, as he was unable to penetrate her on one occasion and she disagreed on another.
He also said that he did not know how to use the ATM and therefore simply pressed a button, leading to $ 1,000 being dispensed each time. But she said she would give the money to Mr. Yong, who would then keep $ 500 and give him $ 500.
District Judge Jasvender Kaur, who convicted Ms. Jiménez, said the crimes were committed against an elderly “vulnerable victim” who was already 91 years old when she had to testify in court.
The judge also found that his evidence was riddled with inconsistencies. For example, Ms Jiménez had said that she only remembered withdrawing money four times, although CCTV footage showed that she had withdrawn money eight times. Ms. Jiménez had also said that she did not know how to use the ATM, even though she had a DBS account and an ATM card of her own.
According to Ms. Jiménez’s attorneys, Judge Chua had found that it was Mr. Yong’s evidence that was inconsistent, rather than that of Ms. Jiménez. A key factor was the fact that he had waited three weeks before reporting the unauthorized removals to the police.
The acquittal has gained ground among some netizens, and some have drawn comparisons to the Parti Liyani case, which involved another maid who was acquitted by the High Court of stealing from her employer, Mr. Liew Mun Leong.
Ms Parti’s case has prompted internal reviews by the Ministries of Home Affairs and Law, and the Minister of Home Affairs and Law, K. Shanmugam, is due to deliver a ministerial statement on the matter in Parliament this week.
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