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Ho was "puppet" in SLA fraud case: defence
By Shaffiq Alkhatib | Posted: 07 January 2011 1959 hrs
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SINGAPORE: Ho Yen Teck, the former swimming instructor who has pleaded guilty to his role in the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) cheating case, was just a puppet, his lawyer told the court on Friday.
Ho, 31, is the first of eight men to admit that he was part of the scam.
His lawyer, Jackson Eng, said Ho did not make a substantial gain in the scam that involved more than S$12m.
The lawyer stressed that Ho only received some S$200,000 in the conspiracy, which Mr Eng said was masterminded by two of SLA's former senior executives, Koh Seah Wee and Lim Chai Meng.
Ho pleaded guilty to 21 charges on 15 December last year. He originally faced 195 charges involving S$9,796,194 but the remaining ones were taken into consideration.
Ho had conspired with 40-year-old Koh and 37-year-old Lim to deceive the SLA into paying the monies to his seven sole proprietorships.
The slim and fair complexioned Ho did this by using fake invoices, without delivering any work to the agency.
The court heard that the SLA disbursed the payments between January 2008 and March last year.
In his mitigation, Mr Eng told District Judge Jasbendar Kaur that Ho's role was a minor one in the conspiracy.
The lawyer pleaded for leniency saying the ruse was only able to succeed as Koh and Lim had abused their positions within the SLA.
However, Deputy Public Prosecutor Jean Chan pressed for a deterrent sentence to "quell the public disquiet and unease that has been generated".
She told the court that the offences were committed against a public institution over a substantial period.
This resulted in a loss of what Ms Chan referred to as an "astronomically large sum of public funds".
She also highlighted that most of the agency's losses - some 80 per cent - were attributed to Ho's companies.
The greater the quantum of loss caused, the greater the sentence should be, said Ms Chan.
Ho will be sentenced next Friday. He can be jailed up to 10 years for each charge.
- CNA/ir