No jail for man who breached self-imposed casino ban
AsiaOne
Friday, Jun 15, 2012
The High Court has ruled that a man, who breached a self-imposed ban from casinos, will not have to be imprisoned for trying to enter a casino last September.
Instead, Mr Xu Zhao He, 41, was fined $3,000 and spared from the two-month prison sentence handed to him earlier.
A Straits Times (ST) article reported that Mr Xu had tried to use his wife's identity card to enter the casino at Resorts World Sentosa after his wife passed it to him for safekeeping.
He was initially fined $800 and sentenced to jail by a district court but appealed on the basis that he had applied for the self-exclusion ban through his son on his own accord.
His lawyer also cited five similar cases last year where no jail sentences were handed out to offenders who had breached their orders.
Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong said that people who apply for self-exclusion should not be jailed because the harsh penalty might dissuade others, who wish to be helped, from applying for self-exclusion orders.
The Chief justice said in his judgement that the jail sentence handed to Xu was 'wrong in principle, inappropriate and manifestly excessive'.
Unlike bans and restrictions imposed by the Casino Regulatory Authority of Singapore and the Commissioner of Police, self-exclusion bans are voluntary efforts made by vulnerable people, to surrender their rights so that they can avoid incurring financial harm to themselves and their families, he added.
The act of breaching a self-imposed ban is not a criminal offence under the Casino Control Act, the CJ said.
Xu told ST that he applied for the order because he did not want to lose money at the casinos, and regretted breaching the ban by trying to enter the casino last year.
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