Three Singaporean members of parliament were today found liable for damages suffered by two town councils due to improper payments made to a management company — whose owners also sat on one of those town councils.
High court judge Ramesh Kannan ruled that Sylvia Lim and Low Thia Khiang had breached their fiduciary duties, while co-defendant Pritam Singh had breached his duty of skill and care when hiring former managing agent FM Solutions and Services (FMSS) in 2011 to manage the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council’s (AHTC) estate.
The improper payments were made to FMSS from 2011 to 2015, and included overpayments and payments that lacked official proof of the work being done, reports said. Co-owners of FMSS were also the town council’s staff.
AHTC is now seeking to claim S$33.7 million (US$25 million) in damages from the three defendants — all members of the opposition Workers’ Party (WP) — while the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council (PRPTC) is seeking to recover any losses that may have been incurred when the three were overseeing the Punggol constituency.
Lim, Low, and Pritam were “clearly involved from the beginning to effect the appointment” of FMSS without a tender, and had “collateral motives in doing so,” the judge said in his ruling.
“Their conduct was improper and the attempt to cloak the same with a veneer of truth and credibility collectively leads to the conclusion that they had not acted honestly and therefore breached their duty of unflinching loyalty to AHTC as fiduciaries,” TODAY quoted him as saying.
The three defendants are among the most senior members of the Workers’ Party, which has governed the Hougang district since 1991 and won the Aljunied constituency in 2011, managing both districts under the AHTC. The party also controlled the Punggol constituency after winning a by-election in 2013, but lost it to the ruling People’s Action Party in the 2015 General Election. The Punggol district is now managed by the PRPTC.
Today’s ruling comes one year after a 17-day trial. The next round of court hearings will focus on determining the amount of damages suffered and how much can be recovered.
FMSS was co-owned by former AHTC staffers Danny Loh and wife How Weng Fan, who had also worked with Low for more than two decades.
In February 2014, the Singapore government directed the Auditor-General’s Office (AGO) to audit the WP town council after an auditor from AHTC raised concerns, The Straits Times reported. The AGO then found lapses in governance and compliance, including the fact that FMSS was owned by the council’s own staff.
A separate audit done by KPMG in 2016 found improper payments to the tune of more than S$1.5 million. The S$33.7 million figure cited as damages refers to all payments made to FMSS.
The 2016 KPMG report was reviewed by an independent panel appointed by the AHTC, which then joined the PRPTC in filing a lawsuit against several town councilors, including Lim, Low, and Pritam.
If the defendants are unable to pay the damages, they will be declared bankrupt and lose their parliamentary seats, reported Channel NewsAsia. Those with bankruptcies “undischarged” by a court cannot be members of parliament or contest parliamentary elections.
The next parliamentary election is expected to happen soon. The elections department announced last month the formation of the electoral boundaries review committee, which is generally an indicator that elections are coming.
Related story:
Singapore General Election looms, as electoral boundaries review committee formed
laifuchen38@outlook.com says
These three persons are not fit to be MPs, they couldn’t even manage Town Councils finance property. They should be changed for CBT.