1 The question at the heart of this case was whether loans given out by the accused persons were genuine “friendly loans”, or whether these amounted to gratifications to induce the recipient of the loans to advance the business interests of a company that the accused persons were involved in. I took the view that it was the latter, and convicted both accused persons as charged. Their total sentences were seven and five months’ imprisonment respectively. Both accused persons have appealed against their convictions and sentences. These are the grounds of my decision, which incorporate and supercede the oral reasons I delivered when I convicted and sentenced the accused persons.

2 The two accused persons, Nazarisham bin Mohamed Isa (“Naza”) and Abdul Razeez bin Rasit (“Razeez”) were jointly tried before me. Each faced offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act (Cap. 241) (“PCA”), for corruptly giving gratification to PW7 Alvin Lee May Sim (“Lee”/“Alvin”), who was the Head of Strategy and Resource Management at Certis Cisco Protection Services Pte Ltd (“Certis”) at the relevant time. The gratifications were in the form of loans and were alleged be inducements to Lee for advancing the business interests of a company named SCAR Services Pte Ltd (“SCAR”) with Certis, which was Lee’s principal.

3  Naza faced seven charges – the first was under s 6(b) of the PCA (for the First Loan), while the remaining six were under s 6(b) read with s 29(a) of the PCA and alleged to be committed in conspiracy with Razeez (the Second to Seventh Loans). Razeez thus faced six charges for his part in the same conspiracy, in respect of the Second to Seventh Loans. The loan amounts in the charges faced by Naza totalled $58,000, while the loan amounts in the charges faced by Razeez totalled $43,000. The loans were given from or around 30 November 2017 to 14 November 2018, while the conspiracy between Naza and Razeez was alleged to have taken place sometime in 2018.

4 The date of each loan, its amount and the owner of the bank account that it was paid out of was as follows:

5 Naza, Razeez and Lee were initially to have faced a joint trial before me. However, on the first day fixed for the trial, Lee decided that he would plead guilty to the charges that he faced, which included mirror charges for the charges faced by Naza and Razeez. Lee’s matter was transferred to another court for his plea to be taken, and the trial against Naza and Razeez thereafter took place before me, with Lee testifying as a prosecution witness. The number of charges that Lee faced and the punishment meted out to him are set out in [145] below.

6 In essence, it was not disputed that the said monetary transfers were made to Lee’s bank account, and that for the charges that Naza and Razeez faced, each was aware of the said transfers. Lee had either asked for the loans directly from Naza, or through Razeez. Where Lee asked for the loans through Razeez, Razeez had Naza’s concurrence to make the transfers. It was also not disputed that Lee had asked for the seven loans, rather than these loans having been specifically offered by the accused persons.

7 What was disputed was why the monetary transfers were made, or why the loans were given. The prosecution’s case was that these were corrupt gratifications for Lee to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis, while the defence’s case was that these were simply friendly loans given without corrupt intent. In Razeez’s case, he additionally contended that his part in the monetary transfers was merely to execute steps in a payment chain after they had been approved, instead of pursuant to any corrupt intent.

8 Before setting out the applicable law and the issues to be addressed, I noted some further key undisputed facts:

(a) Naza began his career in the security industry, and by 2017, was running a group of his own companies, hereafter referred to as the “Naza group of companies”. In April 2015, Naza had been appointed as a director of a company named Gates PCM Integrated Security Pte Ltd (“GPIS”), which was in the security industry. At around the same time, in March 2015, Naza also had incorporated his own company, MTN Consultants, to provide consultancy services to security companies. ¹

(b) Razeez and Naza are brothers-in-law, as Razeez’s sister is Naza’s wife. Razeez had been working with the Singapore Prison Service (“Prisons”) from 2011 to 2017, but admired Naza, whom he described as an “icon” in the security industry. He wanted to learn more about business from Naza and thus joined the Naza group of companies in 2017. He was appointed a director in MTN Consultants, as well as the Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”) of the Naza group of companies. These included Naza Holdings, MTN Consultants, MTN Getaways, and SCAR. Naza also gave Razeez minority shareholdings in some of the companies, including MTN Getaways and SCAR. Razeez did not have to pay for these shares. ²

(c) On 27 February 2017, Naza attended a meeting with representatives of Certis – these included Lee and Lee’s supervisor, PW1 Jason Tan. This was the first time that Naza met Lee. At the meeting, it was agreed that MTN Consultants would supply manpower to Certis, and a memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) was thereafter signed to formalise this agreement. ³

(d) However, as MTN Consultants was not a licensed security agency, Naza proposed that MTN Consultants would supply manpower to Certis through other companies that were so licenced. This proposal was made at a meeting on 21 March 2017 attended by Naza and Razeez, as well as Lee and Jason Tan. The other company that MTN Consultants worked through was Power Security Pte Ltd (“Power Security”), and by May 2017, this included GPIS as well. ⁴

(e) Problems then arose with this arrangement as insufficient manpower was deployed to Certis’ sites. Naza testified that among other things, the owner of GPIS had redeployed its workers to other sites due to Certis’ delayed payments. ⁵ Jason Tan also testified that operational problems had arisen with GPIS, such as failures to fulfil the required headcount, and frequent changes in personnel. ⁶ Contemporaneous WhatsApp messages from Lee to Naza evidenced the problems with manpower shortages, for example:

(f) Eventually, in August 2017, at a meeting that included Naza, Razeez, Lee, Jason Tan and one Ng Boon Gay, it was agreed in principle that SCAR would take over from GPIS and Power Security as a provider of manpower to Certis, once SCAR obtained its security agency licence. ⁸ In this regard, SCAR had been incorporated in July 2017, with Naza as the majority shareholder, and with Razeez as one of the minority shareholders.

(g) SCAR obtained its licence in October 2017, ⁹ and on 1 November 2017, SCAR signed a Resource Partner Agreement (“RPA”) with Certis. It was signed by Jason Tan for Certis, and one “Junaidi” for SCAR. Junaidi and one Chee Siong were said to be in charge of running SCAR, and to this end, Naza had sent Lee a message on 24 October 2017 stating that:

(h) Certis was a provider of security services and introduced the RPA scheme to address manpower shortages. Under the RPA scheme, Certis signed up security companies as resource partners (“RPs”), which could then be awarded security contracts by Certis. Lee, as the Head of Strategy and Resource Management at Certis, recruited and engaged with the RPs. ¹¹ RPs were selected and appointed by a panel chaired by Lee’s superior in Certis, who was Jason Tan at the material time (and subsequently PW3 Jackie Ong). Lee would table the list of RPs for such panel meetings. The process was similar for RPs to be assigned security jobs – where Certis had security jobs to fulfil, Lee’s superior would ask him to present a list of RPs that could support these jobs. Typically, three to five RPs would be presented. Lee made the final decision on which RPs to put up to the panel, but the panel would then decide on which RPs to assign the jobs to, and this would be signed off by Lee’s superior. ¹²

(i)  In September 2018, Lee sent Razeez lists of security officers who had resigned from Certis in the past two years. These were referred to as the “POSC Resignation Reports” for 2016 and 2017 (“the Resignation Reports”). ¹³

9 The prosecution sought to admit into evidence statements that Naza and Razeez had given to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (“CPIB”) – there were two from Naza, and three from Razeez:

(a) Naza did not object to the admission of his statements, and these were admitted into evidence as P21 (recorded on 7 October 2019 by PW6 Principal Special Investigator Chan Jian Yun) and P12 (recorded on 8 November 2019 by Chief Special Investigator Muhd Iskandar).

(b) Razeez objected to the admission of his statements. Parties did not object to one ancillary hearing being conducted to determine the admissibility of all three statements as they were recorded by the same officer, and there was some overlap in the defence’s grounds of objection to their admissibility. I thus allowed a single ancillary hearing to be held. At the close of the ancillary hearing, I determined that the statements had been voluntarily made and admitted them into evidence. My reasons are set out at [20] to [46] below. Razeez’s statements were marked and admitted as P22 (recorded on 8 July 2019), P23 (recorded on 11 July 2019), and P24 (recorded on 8 November 2019).

10 At the close of the prosecution’s case, Razeez made a submission of no case to answer; Naza did not. After considering parties’ submissions, I was satisfied that there was some evidence, not inherently incredible, which satisfied each and every element of the charges that both accused persons faced. I thus called the defence. Both accused persons elected to testify.

11 The applicable law for the main issues in the trial was not disputed – for each offence under s 6(b) of the PCA, four elements must be proven:

(a) The giving of gratification;

(b) As an inducement or reward for the conferment of a benefit;

(c) There was an objectively corrupt element in the transaction; and

(d) The gratification was given with guilty knowledge.

(See Public Prosecutor v Leng Kah Poh [2014] 4 SLR 1264 (“Leng Kah Poh”) at [20].) ¹⁴

12  It was also not disputed that the issues of whether transfers such as those in the present case were made as an inducement and whether there was an objective corrupt element in the transactions are often determined as part of the same inquiry. In this regard, the prosecution needed to establish that the gratification influenced the agent or receiver such that he would act corruptly by conferring a dishonest benefit or advantage on the giver at the expense of his principal, and the agent recognised this to be so – see Leng Kah Poh at [37]. Put another way, the question was whether the receiver received the gratification believing that it was a quid pro quo for conferring a dishonest gain or advantage on the giver in relation to his principal’s affairs – see Tey Tsun Hang v Public Prosecutor [2014] 2 SLR 1189 (“Tey Tsun Hang”) at [17] (as cited in Leng Kah Poh at [22]).

13  In determining whether the transactions were objectively corrupt, the court could have regard to the surreptitiousness or furtiveness of the transactions, the size of the gratification, the relationship of the parties, and whether any rules or codes of conduct were broken. That said, the mere breaking of rules of conduct in and of themselves did not immediately translate to a corrupt intent – whether they did depended on the circumstances – see Public Prosecutor v Low Tiong Choon [1998] 2 SLR(R) 119 at [29] – [30].

14 It was also held by the High Court in Public Prosecutor v Wong Chee Meng [2020] 5 SLR 807 (“Wong Chee Meng”) at [19] that it was possible for gratification not to be tied to the receiver showing favour to the giver in particular transactions, but to cultivate him so that he would be beholden to the giver and behave in such a manner that would advance the giver’s business interests. This point was put in another way by the High Court in Pandiyan Thanaraju Rogers v Public Prosecutor [2001] 2 SLR(R) 2174 at [38] – that transactions may have to be viewed from a broad and pragmatic perspective, and there may be instances when the prosecution need not prove that the giving and receipt of money was an inducement for a specific corrupt act or favour, it being sufficient that it was given in anticipation of some future corrupt act being performed. (See also Public Prosecutor v Phang Ti Hui [2025] SGDC 240 at [39], [41] – [47].)

15 On the matter of whether the accused persons had the requisite guilty knowledge, this was a subjective test. That said, there could be circumstances where the conduct was so obviously corrupt by the ordinary and objective standard that he must have known that his conduct was corrupt – Chan Wing Seng v Public Prosecutor [1997] 1 SLR(R) 721 (“Chan Wing Seng”) at [67].

16 I also bore in mind that under s 9 of the PCA, the recipient actually having the power, right or opportunity to show the favour, or actually having done such an act, was not a pre-condition to a conviction under s 6(a) or 6(b) of the PCA.

17  Finally, it was not disputed that the essence of conspiracy was agreement. In Lai Kam Loy v PP [1993] 3 SLR(R) 143 at [31], the Court of Appeal noted that such agreement would often take place in private such that direct evidence of it was rarely available – in such cases, one looked to the words and actions of the parties to indicate their concert in pursuit of the common object or design, which would give rise to the inference that their actions must have been co-ordinated by arrangement beforehand.

18 In ascertaining whether the transfers were given and received for a corrupt purpose, there were four main issues to be addressed.

(a) First, whether the accused persons had made the transfers as an inducement for Lee to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis, or whether these were merely friendly loans.

(b) Second, whether the transactions were objectively corrupt by the ordinary standard of the reasonable man.

(c) Third, whether the accused persons had made the transfers with guilty knowledge.

(d) Fourth, whether the accused persons had engaged in a conspiracy to make the transfers in the Second to Seventh Loans.

19 Before addressing these main issues, I deal with the ancillary hearing and set out my reasons for admitting Razeez’s three statements into evidence. The prosecution called only PSI Chan as their witness, while the defence called only Razeez.

20 Razeez raised two main grounds as to why his statements should not be admitted into evidence:

(a) The first was that P22 and P23 were given under oppressive conditions.

(b) The second was that his three statements had been tampered with, such that the signatures on the statements were not his, any handwritten amendments made had not been done by him, and various incriminating sentences in the statements had not been said by him.

He also claimed that s 27 of the PCA had not been read or shown to him before his statements were recorded, and that before P23 and P24 were recorded, he had not been shown his previous statements for review. ¹⁵

21 At the outset, I noted that these two grounds were not fielded as being in the alternative, although they were inconsistent with each other. The inconsistency lay in the fact that a claim that a statement was given under oppressive conditions was normally made to explain away the contents of a positive statement as having been given involuntarily. ¹⁶ Indeed, Razeez claimed that he was so tired that did not know what to do but to “co-operate” with PSI Chan when his statements were recorded. However, it was also alleged by Razeez that he had not said anything to incriminate himself, and the incriminating portions of the statements had been fabricated. Thus, if it was true that he had not said anything to incriminate himself, then the supposed oppression clearly had no effect on him, which gave rise to the question why he raised this as a basis not to admit the statements. His case therefore contained a fundamental internal inconsistency. In any case, I considered the evidence and cases put forward by both parties.

22 In respect of P22, PSI Chan testified that Razeez had reported at the CPIB at about 9 am on 8 July 2019 and was interviewed by him. Razeez was given lunch and dinner, and the recording of his statement began at 8 pm, ending at 11:30 pm. PSI Chan testified that he had recorded it in English and Razeez was able to understand him; that a 15-minute break been given at 8:35 pm for Razeez to make a phone call to his wife and use the toilet; and that after the statement was printed out, Razeez went through it and made one handwritten amendment to it. Razeez then signed on each page and at the end of the statement, affirming it to be true and correct, completing this at about 12:06 am on 9 July 2019. PSI Chan stated that he did not make any threat, inducement or promise to Razeez during the recording of the statement, and that Razeez had not complained at any time of feeling tired or unwell. ¹⁷

23 In cross-examination, the following was put to PSI Chan: that when he first brought Razeez to a locker sometime in the morning of 8 July 2019 for Razeez to deposit his belongings, PSI Chan told Razeez to unlock his handphone, even though PSI Chan already knew what the password was (0000) and said it out loud to Razeez; that he had not served Razeez dinner that day; that he had deliberately kept Razeez in the CPIB for over 12 hours in a windowless interview room to “break his spirit” and “create fear in him”; that Razeez was “absolutely tired out” by the time the statement recording began at 8 pm; that when Razeez said that the loans to Lee were friendly loans, PSI Chan rejected this and told Razeez, “If you are not co-operative, I have the whole day here with you”. PSI Chan disagreed with or denied all these accusations. ¹⁸

24 In respect of P23, PSI Chan stated that Razeez arrived at the CPIB at about 1 pm on 11 July 2019 and was fed lunch. He was allowed to look through P22 to see if he wished to make any further amendments to it (he did not make any). The recording of the statement began at 5:05 pm and ended at 5:25 pm. The two-page statement was also recorded in English, and after it was printed out, Razeez made one handwritten amendment to it. Razeez signed on the first and last page of the statement after he had gone through it, to confirm it to be true and correct. This was completed at 5:30 pm. PSI Chan stated that he did not make any threat, inducement or promise to Razeez during the recording of this statement, and that Razeez had not complained at any time during the recording of the statement. ¹⁹

25 For completeness, I noted that in respect of P24, PSI Chan testified that Razeez had reported to the CPIB at 9:50 am on 8 November 2019, and that after an interview, and allowing Razeez to read through P22 and P23 to see if he wished to make any further amendments to them (he did not make any), the recording of the statement began at 1:30 pm and was completed at 5:15 pm. After it was printed out, two handwritten amendments were made to it. It was then signed by Razeez on each of its pages and at the end, to confirm it to be true and correct. This was completed at 5:58 pm. PSI Chan stated that he did not make any threat, inducement or promise to Razeez during the recording of this statement, and that Razeez had not complained of being tired or unwell at any time during the recording of the statement. ²⁰

26 Razeez stated that after he arrived at the CPIB on 8 July 2019, PSI Chan brought him to a locker to deposit his belongings and asked him to unlock his handphone, but before he could do so, PSI Chan said his password (0000) out loud, which shocked him. Thereafter, he was interviewed and given lunch, but was not allowed to call his family although he asked twice, which put him in fear. After further interviews in the afternoon, he felt hungry and under strain when he was not fed dinner and was left alone in the interview room. Thus, by the time the recording of P22 began at 8 pm, he was extremely tired, as well as emotionally and mentally drained, such that he did not know what to do but to co-operate with PSI Chan. He also stated that when he told PSI Chan during the recording of P22 that the loans to Lee were “friendly loans”, PSI Chan grew stern and said to Razeez that it was not a friendly loan but a conflict of interest, and that, “if you do not co-operate with me, I have the rest of the day to be here.” ²¹ Nevertheless, he maintained that he “never said incriminating words” against himself as he “was not part of SCAR management at all”. ²²

27 As for what transpired on 11 July 2019, Razeez stated that after arriving in the CPIB, he was left alone in the interview room for about three hours and felt frightened about what might happen, due to the experience from 8 July 2019. ²³

28 In cross-examination, Razeez was asked about his account of PSI Chan seemingly knowing the password to unlock his handphone, and why he did not ask PSI Chan how he knew the password. His answer was that he was frightened, even though this was at the start of his time in the CPIB on 8 July 2019, before he had even been interviewed. He also stated that he did not ask for dinner although he was hungry because he was too frightened to think of food, and did not tell PSI Chan that he was tired. ²⁴ It was pointed out to Razeez that since he had worked in Prisons for about six years, and had dealt with difficult, violent and challenging inmates, there was no reason for him to be afraid when being questioned in the CPIB or when left alone in an interview room. He disagreed, stating that the situations were different. ²⁵ It was also put to him that there was no need for PSI Chan to coerce him or threaten to keep him in the CPIB for the rest of the day if PSI Chan was fabricating everything in the statement. Razeez disagreed. ²⁶

29 I noted that PSI Chan had given his evidence in a matter-of-fact manner, admitting that he had refreshed his memory as to timings by looking at his investigation diary when preparing for his testimony, while denying that he had threatened Razeez, tried to break his spirit, or tire him out. On the face of his evidence, I had little reason not to accept it.

30 Razeez’s account, however, contained a number of difficulties.

(a) First, as noted at [21], was his claim that he had been so tired, hungry and afraid when giving P22 such that he did not know what to do but to co-operate with PSI Chan. In this context, to “co-operate” normally implies admitting to the offence, which was fundamentally inconsistent with his parallel claim that he had not made any incriminating statements against himself.

(b) Second, his claim that PSI Chan knew the password to his handphone and said it out loud on the morning of 8 July 2019 was impossible since they had only just met. Even assuming this happened, I found it difficult to believe that Razeez would not have even reacted with a question to PSI Chan such as, “How did you know?”, which would have been the natural response. This was especially so since PSI Chan had not even begun to interview Razeez yet and there was no reason for him to be afraid to ask such a question if he was there to assist in investigations and did not believe that he had done anything wrong.

(c) Third, Razeez claimed that he had asked twice earlier on 8 July 2019 to be allowed to call his family, but these requests were denied by PSI Chan. This was not put to PSI Chan, which suggested that it was an afterthought by Razeez. In any case, I agreed with the prosecution that there was little reason for PSI Chan to have denied such requests, when it was not disputed that he had stopped the recording of P22 to allow Razeez to call his wife. ²⁷ It was also odd that Razeez did not seek to explain to PSI Chan why he wanted to call his wife (to reassure her), claiming that he was afraid of PSI Chan, when he conceded that PSI Chan had not intimidated him earlier in the day and the interviews had been “like [a] chit-chatting session”, ²⁸ so there was little reason for him to be afraid.

(d) Fourth, even though I agreed with Razeez that dealing with prisoners was different from being questioned in a CPIB investigation, being around law enforcement officers and holding cells was clearly not an unfamiliar experience for him since he had been a Prisons officer for many years before 2019. Thus, it was difficult to believe that he would have been so timorous as to be greatly frightened by sitting in an interview room for over 12 hours on 8 July 2019 such that this led to his will being sapped when his statement was recorded. In similar vein, it was even more difficult to believe that sitting alone in an interview room for only three hours on 11 July 2019 put him in the same fear.

(e) Fifth, although Razeez was in the CPIB for a long time on 8 July 2019, even by his evidence, there were numerous breaks between the interviews throughout the course of the day, ²⁹ and it was not disputed that there was a break during the recording of the statement for him to call his wife and use the toilet. Razeez also conceded that he had not informed PSI Chan at any time that he was tired, and I found his assertion that he was hungry but at the same time “too frightened to think of food” to be illogical.

31  Ultimately, I was unable to accept that the circumstances of the interviews conducted on 8 and 11 July 2019 as well as the manner in which P22 and P23 were recorded were objectively oppressive or could have placed Razeez in such a state that his will was sapped. Further, given the numerous difficulties I had with Razeez’s account and certain unbelievable aspects of it, I found his credibility to be low, and I did not believe his assertions of being threatened, put in fear, or of being absolutely tired out such that he did not know what to do but co-operate with PSI Chan. I accepted PSI Chan’s evidence, and was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that there had been no threats, inducements or promises made to Razeez in connection with the recording of P22, P23 or P24, and that Razeez had not been oppressed when giving them such that his will was sapped.

32 I then moved to consider the second objection raised by Razeez to the admissibility of his statements.

33 Concerning P22, PSI Chan admitted in evidence-in-chief that he had not signed it immediately after he recorded it from Razeez, and only signed it later, when he realised his omission. ³⁰

34 In cross-examination, PSI Chan was asked when he signed the final page of P22, since the version that had been tendered in court bore his signature, but the version that had been served by the prosecution on Razeez’s previous lawyers in October 2022 did not. He stated that he was unable to recall. He also stated that he had scanned a copy of the (unsigned) statement a day or two after it was recorded, and that would have been the soft copy that was sent to the prosecution (which was used for the Case for the Prosecution). It was put to PSI Chan that:

(a) He intentionally did not sign P22 on 8 July 2019 because he had an “ulterior motive” to change the statement, and “wanted an escape route” so that if “any skulduggery was revealed or detected”, he could say that he was not responsible for it;

(b) He “changed the statement” without Razeez’s knowledge “so as to implicate him”; and

(c) All the signatures in the statement purported to have been made by Razeez were “totally fake” and did not belong to Razeez, while the handwritten amendments were not made by him.

PSI Chan denied all these put questions. ³¹

35 Concerning the contents of P22, it was put to PSI Chan that there were various factual inaccuracies therein, which included Razeez’s directorships, whether Naza signed any RPAs, whether Razeez discussed the waiver of liquidated damages with Razeez, and when Junaidi and Chee Siong were hired to run SCAR. PSI Chan’s response was that he had recorded what Razeez told him. ³² It was also noted that there were some typographical errors in P22: one was a date of a series of WhatsApp messages being written as 15 July 2018 when it should have been 5 July 2018, while another concerned two consecutive paragraphs bearing the same number, 15. It was put to PSI Chan that these constituted evidence of him tampering with the statement, which he denied. ³³ There were also specific incriminating portions at paragraphs 10, 16, 19 and 21 of P22 which, it was put to PSI Chan, Razeez did not say. PSI Chan disagreed with these assertions. ³⁴ (The incriminating portions included Razeez saying that although he knew that Lee was not obligated to help him and Naza, he asked Lee to help in any case because there was a chance that Lee would reciprocate their assistance since they had lent money to Lee; Razeez referring to growing SCAR’s business to get more profits; extending loans to Lee to maintain a good working relationship with him and in the hope that SCAR would continue to have business from Certis; and agreeing that lending money to Lee was a clear conflict of interest.)

36 Concerning P23, it was put to PSI Chan in cross-examination that any signatures therein that purported to belong to Razeez were “fabricated” by PSI Chan, that section 27 of the PCA had not been read to Razeez before the statement was recorded, that any amendments purported to be made had not been by Razeez, and that he had not been shown his previous statement. It was also put to PSI Chan that an incriminating sentence in paragraph 24 of the statement had not been said by Razeez. PSI Chan denied these accusations. ³⁵ (The incriminating sentence was, “We were willing to give the loans because we wanted to maintain a good relationship with [Lee] and hope to continue to do business with M/s Cisco.”)

37 Concerning P24, it was not only put to PSI Chan that the signatures therein purporting to be Razeez’s were fabrications, but that the signatures at the top of P23 and P24 were “totally from different hands”, that any amendments made were not done by Razeez, and that specific sentences in paragraphs 29, 30, 32, 39 and 47 had not been said by Razeez. PSI Chan disagreed. ³⁶ (These sentences were: that Lee could help to increase the number of guards that SCAR supplied to Certis by giving him the Resignation Reports; why Lee gave him the Resignation Reports; what a message from Naza which said “We can cover him as well” meant; how Lee was in a position to help SCAR grow with Certis; and that the loans were given because he and Naza hoped to maintain a good working relationship with Lee, and hoped that Lee could continue to help grow SCAR.)

38 As noted at [20], Razeez contended that his three statements had been tampered with, such that the signatures on the statements were not his, any handwritten amendments made had not been done by him, and the various incriminating sentences in the statements had not been said by him. Although counsel for Razeez initially stated his intention to call a forensic expert to testify as to the authenticity of Razeez’s signatures on the statements, this was eventually not done. ³⁷ (This is dealt with at [43] below.)

39 For P22, as noted at [26], Razeez asserted that he never said any incriminating words against himself during the recording of the statement. This was the same for P23, ³⁸ and he similarly disavowed various incriminating portions of P24. ³⁹ In cross-examination, he asserted that although he had given statements to PSI Chan and signed on them, P22, P23 and P24 were not those statements. He confirmed that this meant that the statements were tampered to incriminate him in corruption offences which he knew could get him incarcerated, but that although he knew about this “tampering” by October 2022, he did not complain to the Police or the CPIB about this serious matter. ⁴⁰

40 I first noted PSI Chan’s admission that he had omitted to sign P22 immediately after recording it from Razeez, and was unable to recall when he in fact signed it. This was undeniably careless and did not reflect well on him. However, it was quite a stretch for the defence to then contend that PSI Chan had intended to make changes to the statement and deliberately omitted to sign it so that he could then deny responsibility if any “skulduggery” was detected. There were several logical flaws with this argument. First, PSI Chan did eventually sign the statement, thus rendering nugatory the contention that he omitted to sign it so that he could disclaim responsibility for it. Second, assuming that PSI Chan had indeed fabricated the statements, there was no reason for him to omit signing P22, when he signed P23 and P24. Third, assuming that PSI Chan was so devious as to fabricate the incriminating contents of the three statements, then he would surely have been more careful about this task and not have errors and omissions in the statements – such as the missing signature or the repeated paragraph 15 in P22. I thus rejected this fanciful contention by the defence and preferred the simpler explanation – which was that PSI Chan had simply been careless.

41 I also bore in mind that it was an extremely serious offence for an investigation officer to fabricate the contents of statements he recorded from a suspect and forge the suspect’s signature; it would be career-ending if he was found out. I therefore took the view that it was objectively implausible and unlikely that this would be done, and approached this contention with caution. The defence’s allegations in this regard also had a “kitchen sink” approach about them, in that multiple allegations were thrown into the mix, with limited regard to whether they cohered or made sense. Apart from the logical flaws identified in their argument above in [40], I also noted that the defence put to PSI Chan that Razeez’s signatures in P23 and P24 were “totally from different hands”. Assuming that the defence’s contention was that PSI Chan forged all of Razeez’s signatures, then they could not have been “from different hands”. If they were, this either meant that PSI Chan had assistance in the forgery (which was not alleged and which in any event would have even more far-fetched), or that some of the signatures were in fact signed by Razeez, while others were made by PSI Chan. In either case, this meant that the defence’s contention could not hold.

42 Further, as pointed out by the prosecution, Razeez accepted that he knew that corruption offences could get him incarcerated, which meant that fabricated statements which falsely implicated him in such offences were extremely serious. Yet, when he purportedly found out about this in October 2022 after the statements were served on his lawyers, he did not raise any complaint to the CPIB or make a police report about the allegedly fabricated statements and forged signatures. Instead, he only stated in his Case for the Defence some one-and-a-half years later that his statements were fabricated. ⁴¹ I agreed with the prosecution that if the extent of the fabrications were as alleged, then this was a “baffling and disproportionately subdued reaction” on Razeez’s part. My view was that Razeez’s failure to take stronger action against these serious offences supposedly committed by PSI Chan was inconsistent with his allegations, and was a strong indication that his allegations were untrue.

43 The defence submitted that the prosecution’s failure to produce expert evidence to prove that the signatures belonged to Razeez meant that they had failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. ⁴² My view was that the legal burden of proving the authenticity of the statements undoubtedly lay with the prosecution. However, given the illogical nature of the defence’s allegations, Razeez’s conduct which was inconsistent with the serious nature of his allegation, and the fact that the signatures in the statements were not in my view obviously different from Razeez’s purported “genuine” signature, the assertions did not cause the evidential burden to shift such that it required the prosecution to call a handwriting expert to prove that the signatures belonged to Razeez. In this regard, the fact that the defence also did not call any such expert despite an initial indication that they would, simply meant that PSI Chan’s account was pitted against Razeez’s.

44 As for Razeez’s assertions that the numerous incriminating portions of his statements had not been said by him, I found these to be too convenient. Further, if he was indeed as tired and hungry on 8 July 2019 as he claimed, I found it difficult to believe that he would have been able to recall with such precision which sentences he purportedly did say and which ones he did not, as well as what he said instead. In any case, as observed earlier, if he was able to maintain his innocence in giving the statements and did not make any self-incriminating concessions, then the supposed oppression clearly did not work on him. If his claim that he had been oppressed was not to be believed, then my view was that his credibility was suspect, such that his disavowal of the contents of his statements also needed to be treated with caution.

45 In view of the above-mentioned difficulties I had with Razeez’s case concerning the alleged fabrications in his statements, I was unable to give his claims much weight. Although I noted PSI Chan’s carelessness in the recording of P22, my view was that this went to the weight to be given to the statement. The alleged inaccuracies in P22 were also a matter of weight, rather than admissibility. Ultimately, I found that PSI Chan’s evidence was consistent and he remained steadfast under cross-examination. There was no reason given for him to have fabricated the statements or forged Razeez’s signatures therein, and I was thus unable to accept those assertions.

46 I was therefore satisfied that no reasonable doubt had been raised by the defence as to the voluntariness of Razeez’s three statements and admitted them into evidence. On the matter of the alleged fabricated portions of the statements, my view was that the weight to be given to them was to be dealt in the main trial, and I so assessed those portions as and when they were relevant in relation to the issues.

47 I thus returned to the issues in the main trial, as identified in [18].

48 The first issue in the main trial was whether the accused persons had made the transfers as an inducement for Lee to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis or if these were merely friendly loans.

49 I began with the question of whether the evidence supported the prosecution’s contention that Naza had extended the loans to Lee to induce him to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis, or whether it supported the defence’s contention that these were mere friendly loans extended to a friend facing financial difficulties.

50 In this regard, the starting point was that Naza and Lee were not known to each other before their formal business dealings involving Certis and the security companies that Naza represented. As noted at [8(c)], they first met in late February 2017. Yet, shortly after they met and well before Lee asked for the First Loan, Naza began attempts to place Lee in a position of conflict by offering him other business and investment opportunities, as well as asking Lee to become his business partner. The examples given by the prosecution ⁴³ were as follows:

(a)  On 22 March 2017, after informing Lee that he had emailed the “MTN signed copy [of] the MOU”, Naza sent WhatsApp messages to Lee inviting him out for coffee, and stating that he could share “other opportunities” with Lee. To this end, Naza told Lee that “Pastor Andrew and me are doing lots of business together especially the diamonds”, and “But anything I share with [yo]u do keep confidential and sep[a]rate from our current collaboration.” Lee’s reply was, “Yes definite. Biz is biz.” ⁴⁴

(b) On 2 May 2017, Naza offered Lee another opportunity, saying, “…there’s a deal of 20% returns for two weeks today ….I am [going] in to make easy one. If [yo]u interested [yo]u may want to ride on together with me. [You] may play small to get feel … let me know.” ⁴⁵

(c) On 15 November 2017, Naza sent Lee a photograph of his “new wheels”, stated that he had a Ferrari, Bentley and Mercedes, and then asked Lee, “[You] want one? Anytime … become my partner in one of my business ok.” ⁴⁶

51 It could be argued that these were nothing more than friendly banter, evidence of a cordial relationship between the two men, or merely that Naza was of a showy nature. However, Naza had met Lee in the context of Lee being an employee of Certis, which was undeniably a large player in the security industry in Singapore, while Naza was a representative of security companies seeking to be awarded work by Certis. Given those formal business dealings between Certis and the companies that Naza represented, my view was that it was unlikely that these were mere innocent communications, and that it was more likely that these were overtures intended to sweeten his business relationship with Lee, impress Lee, and/or ingratiate himself with Lee. While these actions might not be criminal in themselves, they gave an insight into Naza’s state of mind. It was also telling that Naza told Lee that the business opportunities concerning diamonds were to be kept “separate” from their official collaboration, but this was not later said in respect of the loans.

52 I also noted that in late October to early November 2018, Naza, through Razeez, made an offer to give Lee’s team (or 50 persons in Certis) a free trip to the island of Belitung, “courtesy of Naza Holdings”. ⁴⁷ Naza explained that since the bookings had already been made by MTN Getaways and they needed to meet certain targets of the number of tourists they could bring to Belitung, this offer was made to assist Razeez in his running of MTN Getaways. Nevertheless, such an offer was clearly inappropriate, as elaborated at [57] below.

53 Given that Lee and Naza were not known to each other before their formal business dealings involving Certis, I then considered whether their friendship had developed to such an extent that the loans could have been genuine and friendly loans that were untainted by any corrupt intent.

54 Naza’s case was that while his association with Lee began solely as a working relationship, they eventually started to have “side conversations” and found a lot in common with each other. For example, Naza testified that he found Lee to be a gentleman, and that, “we held a lot of conversations on how to, in the future … do missionary works together, and we played billiards together … we had our fun together.” He added that it “eventually became a very friendly relationship”, and Lee’s family attended the birthday parties of Naza’s children, while Lee invited Naza to his home as well. ⁴⁸ As a further example of their friendship, Naza added that Lee had given him a replica of a “King Solomon sword” as a birthday gift, and that everything was going well until the problems with GPIS, when its owner pulled out its manpower from Certis’ sites because of late payments by Certis. ⁴⁹ Since it was not disputed that those problems occurred in May 2017 (see [8(e)]), this gave the impression that this gift was given in mid-2017. Naza added that he eventually learnt about Lee’s financial problems after one of their billiards games, which supposedly arose from health issues faced by Lee’s father and Lee’s wife. ⁵⁰

55 As submitted by the prosecution, ⁵¹ there were numerous difficulties with this portrayal of a good friendship between Lee and Naza. They had known each other for only about nine months when Lee asked Naza for the First Loan. While it was possible for a deep personal friendship to form in such a short time, the evidence showed that it was unlikely that such a friendship had been forged. This view was reinforced by the following:

(a) Naza was unable to recall the names of Lee’s wife or children when giving his statement to CPIB in October 2019, within two years of the First Loan being given. ⁵² This would have been unlikely if they had indeed been such good friends.

(b) Naza had given “playing billiards” with Lee as one of the examples of their friendship and how they “had fun” together. He said that Lee had first shared his financial problems after “one of” their billiards games, which was suggestive of them having played more than one such game. However, under questioning from the Court, he clarified that they had played billiards together only once. ⁵³ I could not but conclude that those initial terms had been used in an attempt to give the erroneous impression of them having spent more occasions together, and thus of their closeness. This led me to treat Naza’s evidence in this regard with caution.

(c) Naza’s example of Lee having given him the replica sword as a birthday present in 2017 as evidence of their close friendship was also shown to be inaccurate, as the present was given to Naza in May 2019 – well after the Seventh Loan in November 2018. In cross-examination, Naza initially changed his evidence to say that the gift was given not in 2017 but in 2018. However, after being shown messages from Lee to him referring to the gift, he eventually accepted that the gift was given in 2019. ⁵⁴ No birthday presents had been given to him by Lee in 2017 or 2018. ⁵⁵ In my view, this was another example of Naza attempting to paint an inaccurate picture of the closeness of his relationship with Lee as at 2017/2018, to justify his giving Lee the loans as a friend.

(d) By Naza’s own admission, he was overseas frequently from mid-2017 for his other businesses, ⁵⁶ and thus could not have spent that much time with Lee – in fact, in his statement to CPIB, Naza stated that they seldom met, seeing each other only once in three to four months. ⁵⁷

56 My finding was therefore that Lee and Naza were clearly not as close as Naza sought to portray, such that the repeated loans, which added up to a substantial amount, could reasonably be considered mere “friendly loans”.

57 As noted at [52], Naza had also offered Lee’s team (or 50 persons in Certis) a free trip to Belitung. My view was that if Naza had intended to assist Lee only personally as a friend in giving him the loans, then such an offer would not have been made as well, since it purported to extend benefits to other staff of Certis, which would clearly have been inappropriate since Naza was dealing with Certis in his capacity as a shareholder of SCAR, even though he asserted that the free trip was “courtesy of Naza Holdings” rather than from SCAR. It was difficult to see what bona fide purpose such an offer held, and my view was that it was simply to further grease the relationship with Lee.

58 Added to this, the prosecution pointed out that there was no detailed repayment plan for the loans, ⁵⁸ and that Naza only took belated steps to recover the loans from Lee, filing a civil claim ⁵⁹ to recover the funds only on 9 March 2021, well after the CPIB investigations had commenced in mid-2019. Naza claimed that he did not press Lee for repayment for two main reasons: because he did not want to pressure Lee further, knowing that Lee was already in financial difficulty, and Lee had made many promises to repay and to send him a repayment schedule. ⁶⁰ There were four such messages identified that were sent before the final loan that was the subject of the charges before this Court:

(a) The first was on 29 November 2017, immediately after Naza agreed to extend the First Loan, when Lee said, “Thanks bro … really appreciate your help. Will work out a plan to return soon.” ⁶¹

(b) The second was on 1 December 2017, after Lee had assisted Naza to book a chalet, and he said, “Really thanks for your help for the loan. Eased off quite a bit of my problem. Give me some time to work out the repayment. Owe you one big one.” ⁶²

(c) The third was on 16 January 2018, in which Lee said, “[Sorry] I [haven’t] got back on the repayment plan yet. Last month met a bad car accident. Scrap off my car. Incurred quite a bit of expenses last month.” Naza’s reply was, “Bro [don’t] mention [a]bout it. Anytime [yo]u comfortable.” ⁶³

(d) The fourth was on 1 June 2018, in which Lee, when asking Naza for a loan of $10,000, also said, “End of the month I sh[ou]d be able to clear back the outstanding.” About ten minutes later, Lee added, “In total I owe [yo]u $25k. If you are ok from Jul[y] onwards every month I’ll return $5k back.” ⁶⁴

59 Two other promises to repay were identified, but these were in 2019, and only one (in January 2019) preceded the start of the CPIB investigations. In October 2019, Lee asked Naza for a further loan, stating that he was selling his house, and should be able to repay some of the loans then. However, as at the time of his testimony in late 2025, Lee estimated that he had repaid only around $3,000. ⁶⁵ Naza testified that he finally brought a lawsuit against Lee in 2021 because Lee had not yet repaid him although it had been some time since Lee had said he would sell his house.

60 While Lee did make promises to repay Naza, there was no perceptible action taken by Lee to fulfil these promises. The first semblance of a repayment plan offered by Lee was in June 2018, more than six months after the First Loan. This promise was to start paying $5,000 the month after, that is, from July 2018. Lee did not make the promised repayment in July or the subsequent months. Yet, Naza continued to agree to extend him at least four more loans, from August to November 2018. I found it difficult to accept that Naza genuinely believed that Lee would repay the loans, especially as time wore on and there was nothing to show for Lee’s empty promises. For his part, Naza said that he did not press Lee for repayment because he did not want to apply further pressure on Lee. Even if I accepted this, it did not explain why he continued to extend more loans to Lee, despite the fact that he separately wondered if Lee needed the money due to a gambling habit or an extramarital affair. ⁶⁶

61 In the absence of any credible explanation as to why Naza extended loans to Lee over a period of about one year when no repayments were made in that time and no clear repayment plan was set out, I agreed with the prosecution that this demonstrated that Naza had no expectation of the loans being repaid. ⁶⁷ The fact that the attempt to formally recover the monies through the lawsuit came nearly two years after the CPIB investigations had begun was also highly suggestive of this being an afterthought and possibly an attempt to legitimise the loans after the fact. I therefore did not give weight to this very belated attempt to formally seek repayment of the loans, and it did not change my view that during the material time, Naza did not have an expectation of being repaid.

62 Up to this point, I had noted that Lee and Naza were not known to each other until about nine months before the First Loan was given. I had also found that their friendship was not of such a degree as to warrant the giving of such large and repeated loans, and that Naza continued to extend the loans to Lee although he privately questioned the reasons Lee needed the money and had no real expectation of being repaid. However, these only showed a lack of any bona fide reason to extend the loans to Lee. The next point to consider was whether the loans were linked to inducing Lee to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis.

63 In this regard, I noted that Naza did have an interest in ensuring SCAR’s growth in the security industry. SCAR had been set up after Certis began to encounter problems with GPIS in mid-2017, and Naza was SCAR’s majority shareholder. It was not disputed that in mid-2017, Lee had sent messages to Naza concerning the issues in Suntec and Selarang, as well as the possible reputational damage to Certis (see [8(e)]). At the meeting of August 2017, it was agreed in principle that SCAR would take over the work from GPIS (see [8(f)]). Naza had clearly attended this meeting as SCAR’s main representative, since Razeez was still fairly new to the Naza group of companies, while Junaidi and Chee Siong were absent.

64 Not long after SCAR had gotten its security agency licence, Lee messaged Naza on 2 November 2017 to say, “Bro, I’m pretty concern about the Suntec situation. Able to do something abt this? If need be cut out immediately to go under SCAR.” Naza responded, “Yes bro. I will be [going] in to Gpis office shortly … Best still all Scar take. … Bro the best Scar take over all. … So moving forward best Scar takes all bro in my opinion. Scar will do a solid job.” ⁶⁸ Given the basis for setting up SCAR, Naza’s involvement in the agreement for SCAR to take over GPIS’s work, and these subsequent assurances to Lee that SCAR should take over and would do a good job, it was clear that Naza was interested in taking this business relationship with Certis forward and seeing it through. A clear demonstration of Naza’s continued interest in the good performance of SCAR could also be seen in the message that Razeez sent to Lee on 15 October 2018 that, “Naza and myself do hope you could guide [Chee Siong] well in getting more headcounts and reducing LDs.” (liquidated damages).

65 Bearing in mind this clear interest that Naza had in SCAR’s success and growth, I also noted the following two points:

(a) First, he had admitted in his statements to the CPIB (P12 and P21) that he knew that it was a conflict of interest for him to have given loans to Lee, because Lee was from Certis which SCAR had business dealings with, and was in charge of making recommendations in relation to the awarding of contracts to RPs. ⁶⁹

(b) Second, the day after receiving the First Loan, Lee sent messages to Naza on 1 December 2017 to say, “Owe you one big one.” and “Just passed to SCAR another new project at MBS. will have more coming!” Naza then replied, “Swee bro! Appreciate it lots.” ⁷⁰ In my view, this exchange demonstrated a clear link being drawn by Lee between the loan and the award of a project to SCAR. The fact that Naza acknowledged the award of the project in this context, without seeking to delink it from the loan, was also highly suggestive of his acceptance of a quid pro quo between them. As noted at [50(a)] and [51], Naza was capable of telling Lee if a business opportunity was to be kept separate from their Certis/security agency dealings, but he did not do so here. It would have been simple for Naza to have made it clear to Lee that the loan had nothing to do the award of projects to SCAR, but this not done. This silence was tantamount to affirmation of Naza’s intent that the First Loan had been given as a first step towards having Lee being obligated to him, knowing that Lee was in a position to continue recommending SCAR for contracts and advancing SCAR’s interests with Certis. The fact that the loans continued in the ensuing months despite there being no real expectation of repayment was a further indication that these were made to cultivate Lee, given his position in Certis and his ability to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis. Thus, although the defence pointed out that Naza did not make any specific requests to Lee for favours when each loan was extended, ⁷¹ my view was that this was not fatal to the prosecution’s case, since the High Court had noted in Wong Chee Meng that it was possible that gratification was to cultivate a receiver, rather than being tied to the receiver showing favour to the giver in a specific instance (see [14] above).

66 To sum up this portion of the discussion, I was unable to accept that the relationship between Lee and Naza was close enough such that these repeated loans were mere genuine, friendly loans. When this was added to Naza’s clear interest in seeing SCAR succeed, the fact that he had made numerous overtures to Lee in offering him business and investment opportunities, did not tell Lee that the loans were to be treated separately from their formal roles as representatives of Certis and its RPs, continued to extend further loans and did not press Lee to repay the loans, I was led inexorably to the conclusion that the loans were not given with any bona fide intent, and that they were intended to be a gratification to Lee to cultivate and induce him into advancing SCAR’s business interests with Certis.

67 I then considered whether the evidence supported the prosecution’s contention that Razeez also intended the loans to be inducements for Lee to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis, or whether it showed that his role was merely that of an innocent facilitator in the transfers, without any corrupt intent.

68 It was not disputed that Razeez only met Lee in the context of his work with the Naza group of companies. He did not assert the same degree of friendship with Lee that Naza did. Razeez also contended that he was a disinterested party in SCAR’s business, because Naza had given him the responsibility of running MTN Getaways, and he was “fully solely focused” on developing that company’s tourism business. Thus, he claimed that the extent of his interest in SCAR was only in its financial matters, as the CFO. He also asserted that Junaidi and Chee Siong were the ones who ran SCAR. ⁷²

69 However, this did not explain why Razeez accompanied Naza to the meetings with Certis in March and August 2017. In particular, it did not explain why he, rather than Junaidi or Chee Siong, was at the August 2017 meeting, since it was agreed in principle then that SCAR would take over the contracts from GPIS and Power Security. It also did not explain the numerous WhatsApp messages between Naza and Lee, between Razeez and Lee, and between Naza and Razeez, which indicated that Razeez was not as disinterested in SCAR’s affairs as he claimed. For example:

(a) On 24 October 2017, Naza sent a message to Lee saying, “Junaidi and Chee Siong are ready. with Razeez overseeing them.” ⁷³

(b) There were also the following exchanges between Razeez and Lee: ⁷⁴

(i) On 28 February 2018, Razeez messaged Lee: “Helo Alvin, give junaidi some projects .. I want to see their capability how far they can handle.” Lee replied, “Bro, I passed them an assignment 50 DPs for SMRT closure starting this weekend. Also starting to increase some DPs for existing sites. There will be more to come! ;)” (“DPs” are duty posts.)

(ii) On 5 September 2018, Razeez informed Lee, “i require SMU and MBS requirement soonest for recruitment...” After Lee gave him some information and stated that for “SMU as and when can pump in guys”, Razeez replied, “Ok bro .. will pump in fast.”

(iii) On 25 September 2018, Razeez and Lee had lunch, after which Lee sent Razeez the Resignation Reports. Lee then followed with this message: “Bro, for a start, these are the lists of officers who resigned from our company the past 2 years. We can get Chee Siong side to have a team to help followup to recruit these officers over. Sms blast and some calling. If can get 10% will be hundreds of officers. Then I can pass all my DPs to you.” Razeez replied, “Ok bro we will look [through]. Thanks for your help and endless support given.”

(iv) On 15 October 2018, after Lee sent Razeez some messages about working out plans to use Malaysians to “support” Certis’ sites, Razeez noted that this would “reduce the shortage of manpower ahead”, then added, “Naza and myself do hope you could guide [Chee Siong] well in getting more headcounts and reducing LDs.” Lee replied, “Yes I will. Will set aside time to meet him regularly to help him & the [business] grow.”

(c) There was also the following exchange between Naza and Razeez on 25 September 2018, when Razeez updated Naza about his lunch with Lee: “I just met Alvin for lunch. We spoke on how we can expand [SCAR]. Alvin [going] to work with [Chee Siong] meeting every bi weekly on increasing [DPs] for [C]ertis as well as our own contracts. Alvin [going] to guide [Chee Siong] on how to [tender] and tightening security contracts. Every month, [C]ertis attrition rate is about 100 plus. So [A]lvin [going] to divert the [quality] ones also pushing us some of their contracts to stars [sic] as our own contracts … This process will be going on even after we are graded. I and [A]lvin are looking to boost [SCAR’s DPs] to 300 in 2-3yrs time. By end of this year looking at mixture of 100 [DPs] of [C]ertis and own contracts. In simply said Alvin [going] to assist and guide [Chee Siong]”. Naza replied, “Ok great. We cover him as well.” ⁷⁵

70 Razeez testified that he was not aware of what was happening during the August 2017 meeting, as he was “just following” Naza and listening to the discussion. ⁷⁶ Concerning the lunch with Lee in September 2018, he claimed that he was merely giving Lee a “listening ear” because he placed Lee “close to [his] heart” due to Lee’s “relationship” with Naza. ⁷⁷ He added that whatever transpired during that lunch was said by Alvin, and it was not a “discussion” between them about SCAR. When asked why he then used the expression that “I and Alvin are looking to boost [SCAR’s DPs]” when updating Naza about the lunch discussion, he said that it was because he and Lee were at the lunch meeting. ⁷⁸ My view was that this evaded answering the question.

71 Even if Razeez was still fairly new to the security business when he attended the meeting of August 2017, the messages showed that his role was not thereafter confined to financial matters, since Naza informed Lee that Razeez would oversee Junaidi and Chee Siong, and Naza did not qualify his statement to say that this oversight was only in financial matters. Razeez thereafter communicated with Lee about testing Junaidi’s capability, about the need to “pump in” manpower at certain sites, and about guiding Chee Siong in getting more headcounts as well as reducing their liquidated damages. When asked to explain his message to Lee of 28 February 2018 (as set out at [69(b)(i)]), Razeez stated during the ancillary hearing that it was because he wanted to “see the effectiveness of Junaidi”, since Junaidi “was the MD at that moment”. ⁷⁹ When asked to explain his message to Naza of 25 September 2018 (as set out at [69(c)]), Razeez then explained that Lee “felt that Chee Siong was lack in management skills and … if SCAR unable to provide manpower, this will affect the attrition rate of Cisco”, which could lead to shortfalls and liquidated damages. ⁸⁰

72 While the reduction of liquidated damages could be a matter which concerned Razeez as the CFO, the other matters were not – these included Junaidi’s capabilities or effectiveness, the manpower requirements at sites or attrition, and Chee Siong’s management of the contracts and manpower. These other matters were clearly to do with the general management of SCAR. In the main trial, Razeez sought to explain the message concerning giving Junaidi projects by saying that he did not mean to interfere, and it was “just a friendly check” to ascertain if Junaidi could effectively handle SCAR as a director. ⁸¹ However, the very fact that Razeez wanted to ascertain Junaidi’s effectiveness as a director demonstrated his interest in the management of SCAR, and corroborated Naza’s message to Lee that Razeez was overseeing Junaidi. The fact that Lee saw fit to inform Razeez of Chee Siong’s shortcomings was also telling – Lee had no reason to do this if it was not within Razeez’s remit.

73 A final point I noted in this regard was that Razeez’s interest in the general management of SCAR was consistent with a sentence in paragraph 3 of his statement P22, which sentence he had not disavowed or contended was erroneous. This stated that when he wanted to leave Prisons and approached Naza, they had a discussion and it was agreed the Razeez would join MTN Consultants to help Naza, and “we would set up a standard security company and apply for a licence from the police licensing and regulatory department to do business in the security industry as it was his forte.” ⁸²

74 The manner in which Razeez updated Naza, stating that he and Lee were looking to boost SCAR’s duty posts in a certain time frame, was also the language of shared responsibility and ownership over that outcome. He also referred to SCAR using words like “us” and “we”. In all, given the nature of these messages, I found it difficult to believe that Razeez had no interest or role in the management and business interests of SCAR, or that it was solely the responsibility of Junaidi and Chee Siong. Naza had clearly given Razeez some measure of oversight over the work and performance of Junaidi and Chee Siong and thus of SCAR, and I rejected Razeez’s claims of disinterest in the management of SCAR.

75 Importantly, the timing of Razeez’s messages to Lee were of note:

(a) First, the message of 28 February 2018 to “give Junaidi some projects” came less than a month after the Second Loan. As noted by the prosecution, it was not part of Lee’s job scope to give Junaidi any projects. ⁸³ Yet, this message was more directive in tone than a request – for example, it was not “could you please give Junaidi some projects”. It was therefore indicative of an expectation by Razeez that Lee was to return the favour of the loans, even if there was no express statement linking this to the loans. It was also telling that Lee’s response was to inform Razeez that work assignments had indeed been given, and that he was starting to increase the duty posts in some sites – this was an indication by Lee that there was effectively compliance with that direction, and an affirmation of the reciprocity in the arrangements between them.

(b) Second, the message of 15 October 2018 stating that he and Naza hoped that Lee would guide Chee Siong also came just three days after the Sixth Loan. Once again, this was not part of Lee’s job, yet he agreed to set aside time not only to meet Chee Siong regularly, but also to help the business grow. ⁸⁴ The defence submitted that through these acts of guiding Chee Siong, Lee was helping SCAR to help Certis, and so Lee was ultimately advancing his own position in Certis. However, this argument did not take the defence very far, because while it may have been that SCAR’s good performance would ultimately benefit Certis, it did not change the fact that Lee’s assistance came after his receipt of the loans and the request for the said assistance.

76 Ultimately, it was clear that Razeez’s messages to Lee and Naza demonstrated his interest in SCAR’s continued good performance of its assignments with Certis.

77 I also noted that even before Razeez sent Lee the $12,000 in the Second Loan on 30 January 2018 (which was the first transaction that Razeez was charged for), Razeez had received a WhatsApp message from Lee on 24 January 2018, in which Lee said, “Ok I might need some help from [you] end of month if possible.” Razeez replied, “if [yo]u need some cash [I] can anytime forward [yo]u first. … For [yo]u I willing to give a hand.. no issue .. any amount.” This short exchange showed Razeez’s willingness to extend further loans to Lee, without a limit as to the amount. Since Razeez had no relationship with Lee apart from his role as the CFO of the Naza group of companies, it had to be asked why he was willing to be so generous with Lee. This generosity was even more questionable since Razeez stated in paragraph 24 of his statement P23 (in a portion that was not disavowed) that “we were reluctant to give the loans as we could have used the monies for our own company expenses.” It was not disputed that Razeez subsequently transferred the monies to Lee in the Second to Seventh Loans, and in the time between (that is, in February and October 2018), sought Lee’s assistance and intervention in advancing SCAR’s business interests with Certis. Given the timing and content of the WhatsApp messages relative to those loans, it was difficult to de-link the messages and requests from the loans. It was also difficult to accept that Razeez was merely playing an innocent facilitative role in completing the payment chain.

78 Taking a broad view of the timeline of the messages, the loans and requests for assistance or intervention, together with Razeez’s interest in SCAR’s continued good performance, the evidence pointed to the fact that he also intended the loans to Lee to be inducements for Lee to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis. I therefore rejected Razeez’s assertions to the contrary.

79 The defence contended that because Certis had numerous security assignments to give out and SCAR would have been awarded the assignments anyway, there was no need to bribe Lee. It was also pointed out that Lee did not have the final say in the award of assignments to RPs. ⁸⁵ As noted at [16], under s 9 of the PCA, the agent’s power to actually show favour was not a pre-condition to proving this offence. In any case, it was not denied (see [8(h)]) that Lee put up the names of RPs to the relevant panel in Certis, recommending them for job assignments. This meant that his act of listing and recommending an RP for consideration for an assignment was necessary before they could be awarded the assignment. Thus, even if he may not have been the final decision-maker in any award, his role was still a critical one in that process.

80 It was in any event not the case that the only way that SCAR’s business interests could be advanced was through the award of duty posts or work assignments. As could be seen from the undisputed exchanges between the parties, Lee was in a position to confer other benefits, and he did so.

(a) First, he sent the Resignation Reports to Razeez to assist SCAR with recruiting more security officers. Lee admitted that it was not part of his job to assist Razeez to deal with manpower issues, and that he was not authorised to share these Reports with Razeez or SCAR, and yet he did so to reciprocate the loans that had been extended to him. ⁸⁶ Counsel for Razeez submitted that there was nothing “confidential” about these Reports, ⁸⁷ but the fact remained that Lee was not allowed to share this with Razeez or SCAR, not least because the Reports contained information such as names and telephone numbers of previous Certis employees, who were identified as holders of pink identity cards. This was therefore a clear example of a dishonest benefit that Lee conferred upon SCAR to reciprocate the loans given to him. Even if it was claimed that the information in the Resignation Reports was not used by SCAR, ⁸⁸ it did not change the fact that Lee’s act in sharing this information with Razeez was unauthorised.

(b) Second, Lee agreed to guide Chee Siong in increasing headcount, reducing liquidated damages, and helping SCAR’s business to grow. As noted above, these were also not part of Lee’s job scope. Nevertheless, he agreed to do these to reciprocate the help that had been given to him through the loans. ⁸⁹ While Lee was unable to say if the number of duty posts were increased or the liquidated damages were reduced, the fact remained that he had agreed to assist SCAR in this manner. It might be said that by helping SCAR to increase its headcount, Lee was indirectly helping Certis, and was thus doing something that was ultimately beneficial for his principal. However, it could also be said that instead of spending his time guiding Chee Siong, or assisting SCAR to increase its headcount by diverting quality staff to it, pushing contracts to it and helping it to grow its business, Lee could have been sourcing for better-managed RPs who did not need such guidance or assistance, and who could better serve Certis.

81 Ultimately, my view was that the loans did lead Lee to confer dishonest benefits on SCAR, since he wished to reciprocate them and thus found ways to show favour to SCAR.

83 The second issue was whether the transactions were objectively corrupt. I answered this in the affirmative, for the following reasons.

84  First, the gratifications added up to a large amount. In respect of the charges faced by Naza, they added up to $58,000, while the loans in the charges for Razeez added up to $43,000. Although these were broken down into multiple loans, even the smallest loans, at $3,000, could not be described as of low or insignificant value such that they could be explained away as a token amount of money “between friends”.

85 Second, the relationship between the parties was not of a such degree that large and repeated personal loans (or friendly loans) were warranted.

(a) I noted above (at [55]) that Naza was not as close to Lee as he sought to portray, given the limited amount he knew about Lee or Lee’s family, and the limited amount of time they had spent together. As stated above (at [50] to [52] and [57]), given the circumstances under which they first met and their continued official relationship in their respective capacities in Certis and SCAR, my view was that Naza’s overtures and offers to Lee of business opportunities, cars and even trips were not innocent or mere indications of a close friendship. By extension, the loans were not genuine friendly loans, especially since they were not one-off, Lee only made empty promises to repay them, and Naza made no attempts to ask for repayment or to recover the loans until more than three years after the First Loan.

(b) As for the relationship between Lee and Razeez, it was even further removed. Although he claimed that he held Lee close to his heart because of Lee’s relationship with Naza, he clearly spent even less time with Lee than Naza did and did not claim to be good friends with Lee. The loans that he assisted Naza to extend to Lee were therefore clearly not borne out of any personal friendship with Lee.

86 Third, while the transactions were not surreptitious or furtive in the sense of cash being passed in an envelope under the cover of darkness, they were not open in that Lee did not declare the loans to Certis. He admitted that it was because it was against company policy and against Certis’ Code of Conduct to take such loans, and he would have lost his job as a result. Further, he stated that while one of the reasons that Naza extended the loan to him might have been their friendship, he also thought that it was because of his position within Certis. ⁹⁰ Given the circumstances of the case, my view was that he must have known that it was in a large part because of his position in Certis. The defence submitted that the mere breaking of a rule or code of conduct did not immediately translate to a corrupt intent. ⁹¹ However, when the circumstances of this case were examined in their totality, my view was that this non-compliance with the Certis Code of Conduct did support the finding of a corrupt intent.

87 It was therefore clear that the gratifications from Naza and Razeez influenced Lee to act corruptly by conferring the dishonest advantage of SCAR – see reference to Leng Kah Poh above at [12]. Not only this, as elaborated below, I also found that the parties believed or knew that there was a reciprocal arrangement.

88 Lee testified that he had asked Naza for the First Loan only in November 2017 because that was when his financial problems became very aggravated. He thus initially disagreed that he had not asked Naza for any loans before November 2017 because Certis and SCAR had not yet begun their formal vendor-contractor relationship. However, upon being shown a statement that he gave to the CPIB on 8 November 2019, he agreed with what was said therein – that he did not ask for loans from Naza before the agreement between Certis and SCAR was signed although he had been in debt since late 2016, because Naza’s company did not yet have a business relationship with Certis and Lee. He thus stated that this business relationship was one of the factors that led him to asking Naza for the loan, though his financial problems were the main reason for this. ⁹²

89 Lee also admitted that he believed that Naza was willing to extend the loans to him for three main reasons – because of their ongoing personal relationship, because Naza had the financial means to do so, and because he felt that Naza would reciprocate the help that Lee had given to him. He nevertheless clarified that although the ongoing personal relationship with Naza was one of the factors leading to why asked for the loans, it was not a key factor. He believed that due to his position within Certis and because he had connected SCAR to Certis, Naza would agree to his requests for a personal loan. He also presumed that Naza and Razeez would not reject his requests for loans because they knew that he could influence and recommend jobs for SCAR. In respect of the Second to Seventh Loans, Lee testified that his view was that Naza and Razeez would help with his loan requests because they wanted to maintain a good relationship between SCAR and Certis. ⁹³

90 As for why he sent the Resignation Reports to Razeez in September 2018 but not to anyone else or other RPs, Lee gave two reasons. The first was that he was not aware of any other RPs having “manpower situations”. The second was that he did this despite not being allowed to do so, to reciprocate the loans that had been given to him until that point in time. ⁹⁴ On why he told Razeez that he would set aside time to meet Chee Siong regularly and help the business to grow even though this was not part of his job, Lee said that he did so to reciprocate the help that had been given to him for the loans. ⁹⁵ Incidentally, Lee also asserted in his statement given to the CPIB on 11 July 2019 that he asked for the Fifth Loan knowing that Razeez would accede to it because Lee had sent him the Resignation Reports and he knew that Razeez wanted to maintain a good relationship with him. ⁹⁶

91 In addition, as noted above, the day after receiving the First Loan, Lee sent a message to Naza (as set out at [65(b)]) stating that there would be more contracts coming. A month after the Second Loan and after receiving Razeez’s message to give Junaidi some projects, Lee replied that certain assignments had already been given, and again that, “There will be more to come!” (see [69(b)(i)]). Lee sought to explain these remarks by stating that since he knew that Certis had many contracts and a severe manpower shortage, there would inevitably be assignments that could be given to SCAR. However, after sending Razeez the Resignation Reports, Lee also told Razeez that “if can get 10% will be hundreds of officers. Then I can pass all my new DPs to you.” When questioned about why he made such a declaration to Razeez, Lee skirted the issue and replied that jobs were given to other RPs too. ⁹⁷ He did not explain why he said that all the new duty posts could be passed to Razeez/SCAR. In my view, this and Lee’s other assertions were clear indications of his intention to advance SCAR’s interests with Certis. Thus, contrary to what was suggested by the defence, ⁹⁸ Lee did not need to expressly state that he would be able to advance SCAR’s interests with Certis when he asked for the loans.

92 Given that Lee had already pleaded guilty and had served his imprisonment term for corrupt receipt of the loans from Naza and Razeez by the time he testified before me, my view was that he had little reason to lie about the accused persons’ roles in these transactions, even if he seemed to try to mitigate his own. In any case, where he admitted to matters that were against his own interest, such as the fact that he sent Razeez the Resignation Reports and offered to help SCAR by guiding Chee Siong to reciprocate the loans, I accepted his testimony.

93 In summary, Lee acknowledged that the business relationship between Certis and SCAR was one of the reasons why he initiated his first request for a loan, that he felt that Naza and Razeez would not reject his requests because of his position in Certis and that they would reciprocate the help that he had given them. He also reciprocated the help that they had given to him by doing things which were either prohibited, or outside his job scope. This was a perversion of his integrity in the performance of his duty as a result of the bribery (see Chan Wing Seng at [26]). It was thus clear that Lee, as the receiver of the gratification, believed and/or recognised that he was in a quid pro quo or reciprocal arrangement with Naza and Razeez (see references to Leng Kah Poh and Tey Tsun Hang at [12] above).

94 As for whether there was a corresponding belief of the part of Naza and Razeez of such a reciprocal arrangement, as noted at [69(c)], after Razeez updated Naza on 25 September 2018 about the plans for Lee to guide Chee Siong, divert quality staff to SCAR and push up the number of SCAR’s duty posts, Naza replied, “Ok great. We cover him as well.” In his statement P12, Naza explained at paragraph 39 therein that what he meant here was that “SCAR needed to make sure we do a good job, as Alvin had recommended the jobs from Certis Cisco to SCAR and we do not want to do a bad job and reflect badly on Alvin.” With respect, I found it difficult to see how the words “we cover him as well” could objectively carry this meaning. If he had intended to tell Razeez that they needed to do a good job so as not to let Lee down, he could have openly said, “Ok great, let’s do a good job,” or even, “Let’s do a good job and make Alvin look good.” My view therefore was that this strained interpretation of the words given by Naza was to hide their true meaning, since the word “cover” in the present context was more likely to carry the sense of taking care of Lee, and was used euphemistically.

95 In Razeez’s statement P24, he stated at paragraph 32 that these words from Naza meant that since Lee was willing to help SCAR’s business to grow with Certis, they should help him by continuing to give him loans when he asked for them even though Lee might have difficulty returning the loans. For the reasons set out in [40] to [45], I had rejected Razeez’s contention that his statements had been fabricated by PSI Chan, and admitted them into evidence after the ancillary hearing. Despite this, the defence maintained the allegations of fabrication, including for paragraph 32 of P24. While I did not see any reason to change my view that the statements (including paragraph 32) had not been fabricated by PSI Chan, I paused to consider the weight to be given to the paragraph. To place paragraph 32 in its proper context, I noted the paragraphs preceding it:

(a) In paragraph 29, Razeez related what Lee told him during their lunch meeting of 25 September 2018. Razeez accepted that a portion of paragraph 29 had been said by him, but disavowed the portion where Lee said that he could help to increase the number of security guards SCAR had by giving him the Resignation Reports.

(b) In paragraph 30, Razeez explained that Lee gave him the Resignation Reports because SCAR needed security officers due to the high attrition rate, and that he had agreed to Lee’s suggestion because he wanted SCAR’s business to grow too. He then stated that after they left the lunch venue, Lee sent him “2 name list containing details of the security officers who resigned from M/s Cisco.” The whole paragraph was disavowed by Razeez.

(c) Paragraph 31 stated, inter alia, that Lee said during the lunch meeting that he could help SCAR by pushing some of Certis’ contracts to SCAR. This paragraph was not specifically disavowed by Razeez.

96 I then compared those disavowed portions of these paragraphs with the contemporaneous evidence and Razeez’s own testimony:

(a) The disavowed portion of paragraph 29 concerned Lee telling Razeez during the lunch meeting that he could help to increase the number of security guards that SCAR had by giving him the Resignation Reports. This was in fact consistent with what Lee did shortly thereafter – he sent Razeez the Resignation Reports with the words, “Bro, for a start, these are the lists of officers who resigned from our company the past 2 years. We can get Chee Siong side to have a team to help followup to recruit these officers over. … If can get 10% will be hundreds of officers.” ⁹⁹ The fact that there was no prelude from Lee to explain why he was sending these lists to Razeez indicated that they must have spoken about it during the lunch meeting. The fact that Lee went on to refer to the recruitment of the security officers and that there could be “hundreds” of them was also entirely consistent with the mention in paragraph 29 of increasing the number of security guards. The disavowed portions of paragraph 29 were thus consistent with Lee’s WhatsApp messages to Razeez.

(b) As for paragraph 30, the portion explaining why Lee gave him the Resignation Reports (ie, due to the high attrition rates) was consistent with Razeez’s testimony. As noted in [71], when explaining his message to Naza in which he related his lunch meeting with Lee, Razeez testified that Lee had felt that Chee Siong was lacking in management skills, and if SCAR was unable to provide manpower, then this would affect attrition. The portion in paragraph 30 where Razeez then said that he agreed to Lee’s suggestion because he wanted SCAR’s business to grow was also consistent with his message thereafter to Naza (as set out at [69(c)]), in which he said that he and Lee were “looking to boost” SCAR’s duty posts to 300 in two to three years’ time, and stated how many duty posts and contracts they were looking to have by year-end. These were projections into the future and clearly referred to the growth of the business, as well as Razeez’s desire to achieve that growth. Paragraph 30 then ended with a mention of Lee sending him the Resignation Reports, which clearly did happen. Paragraph 30 was therefore also consistent with Razeez’s own testimony, his WhatsApp message to Naza, and with undisputed facts.

97 Since these paragraphs preceding paragraph 32 were consistent with the contemporaneous messages sent by the parties and with Razeez’s own testimony, or had not been specifically disavowed by Razeez, I had little reason not to give them their full weight. Since paragraph 32 followed therefrom, I had little reason to then disbelieve it or reject it as well. I therefore gave full weight to paragraph 32 of P24, not least because this explanation was also more in keeping with the ordinarily understood meaning of the words than Naza’s strained explanation was. I therefore concluded that the word “cover” in the present context was indeed a euphemism to mean continuing to take care of Lee by giving him loans as necessary, rather than to mean that they should do their work well so as not to make him look bad.

98 In any event, as noted above, Razeez told Lee to give Junaidi more projects to test his capabilities and later expressed a hope by Naza and himself that Lee could guide Chee Siong to get more headcounts and reduce liquidated damages. Although it was submitted by counsel for Razeez that this remark by Razeez was “not unambiguously corrupt on its face” ¹⁰⁰ , it did not change the fact that these asks from Razeez were over and above what Lee was required to do in his job with Certis. I therefore found it difficult to accept that Naza and Razeez would have asked Lee to go beyond his ordinary call of duty in this manner, unless they believed that he would accede to their wishes and would not regard these as unreasonable or inappropriate demands. To my mind, the only reason they would have had for such a belief was the knowledge that Lee would seek to reciprocate the loans that they had extended to him.

99 To sum up the discussion on the first two issues, my view was that when one took a step back and examined the facts from a broad and pragmatic perspective, it was clear that the loans were extended to Lee in the knowledge that given his position in Certis, he could advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis, and that such favour was in fact sought by the accused and then shown by Lee. I thus found that the loans extended to Lee were not mere friendly loans, but were made as inducements to cultivate Lee so that he would advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis. The loans or gratifications were therefore objectively corrupt.

100 On the third issue of whether the accused persons had the requisite guilty knowledge, as noted at [65(a)], Naza had admitted in his statements that he knew it was a conflict of interest to give loans to Lee in view of their official business dealings and their respective positions in that regard. As he did not contest the admissibility of his statements or their accuracy, I gave full weight to this admission. When this was put together with my findings above such as their limited friendship, the continued large loans despite the lack of any genuine expectation that the loans would be repaid and the lack of any proper repayment plan, added to the continued requests to Lee for assistance and intervention as well as the showing of favour by Lee, I could not but conclude that Naza must have known that the loans were corrupt.

101 In this regard, I paused to note that counsel for Naza submitted that Naza’s knowledge of a conflict of interest did not translate to a corrupt intent. This was on the basis that in paragraph 13 of P12, after acknowledging that it was a conflict of interest for him to extend the loans to Lee, Naza said that there was nevertheless no “explicit agreement” for Lee to give him more business or help him. ¹⁰¹ This argument did not take the defence very far, because even if there was no “explicit agreement” on the terms of their reciprocal arrangement, as set out above, I had found that the parties’ conduct and their words in their contemporaneous WhatsApp messages made it clear that they believed or knew of their reciprocal arrangement and understood what the exchange was.

102 As for Razeez, he admitted in paragraph 39 of P24 to knowing that Lee was in a position to help advance SCAR’s business with Certis as Lee could make recommendations to Certis to award jobs to SCAR. Although Razeez disavowed this sentence in P24, as noted above in my findings for the ancillary hearing, I rejected Razeez’s testimony that his statements had been fabricated, in particular the incriminating portions. I found no reason to change this view at the close of the main trial, and I therefore found that this sentence had been made by Razeez. As stated at [97], I had little reason not to give full weight to certain other paragraphs in P24 which Razeez had disavowed. In the same vein, I had little reason not to give full weight to this sentence in P24, especially since this sentence was in fact commonsensical – knowing Lee’s role in Certis and knowing SCAR’s business, Razeez must have known what benefits Lee could potentially give to SCAR.

103 Razeez had also agreed in P22 (at paragraph 21, Q&A4) that it was a conflict of interest for him and Naza to lend money to Lee. This portion of P22 was disavowed by Razeez during the ancillary hearing as a fabrication, and he maintained this position in the main trial, saying that there was no conflict of interest since these were friendly loans. As above, having rejected his bare assertion at the close of the ancillary hearing that his statements had been fabricated, I saw no reason to change this view at the close of the main trial. My view therefore was that he did admit in P22 that the loans were a conflict of interest. Given that this was against his interest, I also gave weight to it, on the basis that a person is less likely to make an incriminating statement unless it is true. On Razeez’s assertion in testimony that that the loans were friendly loans, my view was that he was likely simply parroting Naza’s position on the nature of the loans, and since I had already found that the loans were not mere friendly loans, I rejected this assertion.

104 Ultimately, given the nature of his relationship with Lee, the quantum and frequency of the loans and the various requests made of Lee by Razeez on behalf of SCAR and on behalf of himself and Naza, it was a clear corrupt reciprocal exchange of favours between the accused persons on the one hand and Lee on the other. Thus, even if I was wrong to have given weight to the portions of Razeez’s statements referred to in the preceding two paragraphs, in my view, these acts were so obviously corrupt by the ordinary and objective standard that Razeez must have known that the loans were corrupt – see Chan Wing Seng at [67].

105 The fourth issue was whether Naza and Razeez had engaged in a conspiracy to corruptly give the gratifications to Lee as inducements.

106 In this regard, Naza contended that the communications between himself and Razeez only showed their “mere association” and did not amount to a conspiracy, ¹⁰² while Razeez maintained that he was merely executing steps in a payment chain instead of acting pursuant to a conspiracy.

107 While there was no direct evidence of an agreement between them to this end, ¹⁰³ my view was that their actions and their words in their contemporaneous messages provided ample indirect evidence to show that they were acting in concert to give Lee the loans, and that their common object was to induce Lee to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis:

(a) First, I have already noted above how both Naza and Razeez were interested in ensuring SCAR’s growth and continued good performance, and that the loans were extended to Lee to induce him to advance SCAR’s business interests with Certis.

(b) Second, each man’s role in SCAR was not as innocuous or unconnected as they contended:

(i) Naza’s role was not that of a mere bystander or one who had only a casual association with Razeez: it was not disputed that Razeez reported to him on matters concerning the Naza group of companies, including SCAR. As noted above, Razeez reported the matter of Lee guiding Chee Siong, and Naza noted this with approval, instructing Razeez that they would then “cover” Lee. Naza thus had a supervisory role over Razeez and instructed Razeez to take care of Lee by giving him more loans, and I rejected his attempt to distance himself from the key role he played in SCAR and in the giving of the loans.

(ii) As noted at [77], in January 2018, Razeez had also offered to forward cash to Lee before the Second Loan was extended, demonstrating that he was willing to follow up on the First Loan that had been given by Naza with another loan. There was no reason to make such an offer if his role was purely administrative or clerical, or if he was merely executing steps in a payment chain. I noted that this offer also preceded Naza’s express instruction to Razeez in September 2018 to “cover” Lee, indicating that they both had this understanding of extending loans to help Lee as early as January 2018.

These words and acts showed that they both had the common goal of taking care of Lee by granting him loans. When examined together in the broad timeline, it could be seen that these preceded or followed requests for benefits and the conferment of such benefits by Lee on SCAR. It was therefore clear that Naza and Razeez were acting in a co-ordinated manner to give Lee the loans as inducements for him to advance SCAR’s interests.

(c) Third, it was not disputed that Razeez had Naza’s approval to disburse the Second to Seventh Loans to Lee. When Lee asked Naza for the last two loans, Naza also directed Razeez to disburse them. Thus, the loans would not have been disbursed if not for Naza’s instructions and/or consent, and if not for Razeez’s action thereafter. Again, this showed each man playing his essential role towards the common goal of disbursement of the loans, and that they were not acting independently or in an unconnected manner. In this regard, the fact that Razeez needed to obtain Naza’s approval to disburse the loans did not mean, as suggested by the defence, ¹⁰⁴ that Razeez was innocent of any corrupt intent or was not a co-conspirator. In my view, it merely evidenced their relative positions in the conspiracy, with Naza being the dominant partner.

108 When these separate words and actions of Naza and Razeez were put together and considered within the context of the whole case, it was clear that these were in pursuit of their common design to continue extending loans to Lee to take care of him and to continue seeking favours from him to advance SCAR’s business interests. I was therefore satisfied that there was a conspiracy between them to corruptly give the loans to Lee, and that the Second to Seventh Loans were made pursuant thereto.

109 In the final analysis, I was satisfied that all the charges against both accused persons were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and I convicted them both accordingly.

110 On each of their charges, the accused persons were liable to be punished with a fine not exceeding $100,000, or to an imprisonment term not exceeding five years, or both. Naza had unrelated previous convictions, while Razeez was untraced. I treated them both as untraced for the present purposes.

111 The parties’ positions on sentencing were as follows:

(a) The prosecution’s position was that both accused persons should each receive a global sentence of nine to 11 months’ imprisonment. Specifically:

(i) For the charges involving gratifications of $10,000 and above, they should each receive a sentence of 5.5 to 6.5 months’ imprisonment per charge; and

(ii) For the charges involving the gratifications of $3,000 to $5,000, they should each receive a sentence of 3.5 to 4.5 months’ imprisonment per charge.

The prosecution submitted that for each accused person, the sentences for only two charges should be run consecutively.

(b) The defence’s position was as follows:

(i) For Naza, that he should receive a sentence of two months’ imprisonment per charge, with two terms to run consecutively such that his total sentence should be no more than four months’ imprisonment; and

(ii) For Razeez, that a substantial fine in lieu of imprisonment could be imposed, but if the court was not with the defence on this point, then in the alternative, a global sentence not exceeding six weeks’ imprisonment would suffice.

112 It was trite that deterrence was key in sentencing for corruption offences.

115 It was not disputed that the sentencing framework for the present offences under s 6 of the Prevention of Corruption Act was found in Goh Ngak Eng v Public Prosecutor [2023] 4 SLR 1385 (“Goh Ngak Eng”).

116 Under step 1 of this framework, I was required to identify the level of harm caused by the offence, and the level of the offender’s culpability.

120 On the harm caused, the prosecution first submitted that the public service rationale was engaged because Certis, “through its deployment of security officers to various designated sites, [was] a provider of essential security services akin to those provided for by public bodies.” In particular, it was submitted that since Certis’ security officers were deployed to prominent public areas such as large malls as well as sensitive installations such as SMRT rail and bus depots, this was “akin to what law enforcement officers or military personnel would provide”. ¹⁰⁵ Counsel for Razeez submitted that this factor should “either not be engaged or be given only very modest weight”, because this case did not involve corruption in a public body or a public procurement process, but concerned a private resource partner agreement, in which a panel in Certis decided who to assign jobs to. ¹⁰⁶

121 Although I noted that the premises covered by Certis did include sensitive installations, they also included regular commercial premises where the security concerns were not of the same order, even if they were “large malls”. In the facts before me, although there were indications that the jobs done included deployments to MRT installations, it was not the case that these were the primary premises covered by SCAR. My view was that to elevate the work done in the present case to being akin to what law enforcement officers or military personnel would provide, such that the public service rationale should be fully engaged, was overstating the matter. I thus agreed with the defence that if this factor was given any weight at all, it would be extremely modest.

122 Second, the prosecution acknowledged that direct pecuniary loss suffered by Certis would be difficult to quantify, but submitted that harm was nevertheless caused to Certis as the relationship between it and Lee was suborned by Lee’s failure to disclose his illicit benefits, and by his conduct in engaging in activities outside the scope of his duties. This included Lee agreeing to guide Chee Siong and providing Razeez with Certis’ Resignation Reports. It was also noted that there were indications that SCAR was not performing up to Certis’ expectations. ¹⁰⁷ Counsel for Razeez submitted that there was no evidence of actual economic detriment, such as Certis having to pay inflated prices, and that the prosecution was thus relying only on “abstract detriment”. ¹⁰⁸

123 It was not disputed that no actual economic loss by Certis was proved. Any detriment such as the suborning of the agent-principal relationship or loss of reputation to Certis due to its agent accepting bribes was necessarily present in a finding of guilt for these offences. Thus, while I accepted that harm was caused to Certis in these offences, it was difficult to specify their magnitude such that it clearly pointed to the need to assign a higher level of harm.

124 Third, on the matter of loss suffered by third parties, the prosecution accepted that there was no indication that other RPs of Certis had suffered any loss of business as a result of the favour shown by Lee to the accused persons. Nevertheless, it submitted that the offences violated the third parties’ legitimate expectations that Certis would treat them fairly and equitably. ¹⁰⁹ Counsel for Razeez acknowledged that this factor existed but submitted that it was limited and did not elevate the harm caused to more than “slight”. ¹¹⁰

126 The fourth factor cited by the prosecution was that the Second to Seventh Loans were given pursuant to a conspiracy between the two accused persons, which was an aggravating factor since “group offences have been observed to generally result in greater harm”. ¹¹¹

132 Second, on the roles played by the accused persons in the corrupt transactions, the prosecution submitted that although Lee solicited the loans, Naza had taken steps to place Lee in a position of conflict of interest by inviting him for business opportunities, while Razeez was instrumental as the main liaison between SCAR and Lee. ¹¹² Counsel for Razeez nevertheless submitted that the final decision to grant the loans did not lie with Razeez, and he was not the principal decision-maker. ¹¹³ On this point, my view was that Naza’s culpability was higher than Razeez’s, since he initiated the cultivation of Lee, and approved the loans. As noted in [107(c)], Naza was also the dominant conspirator. Nevertheless, for the Second to Seventh Loans, I agreed with the prosecution that Razeez’s role was essential to the funds being passed, and his role was thus also key to the completion of the offences. In this regard, while his culpability might be lower than Naza’s, it was not significantly so.

133 Third, on premeditation, the prosecution submitted that the accused persons knew Lee’s position within Certis and that he was in a position to assist SCAR. They thus knowingly sought to cultivate him and instigate him to abuse his position. ¹¹⁴ My view was that although the loans were granted to Lee as and when he asked and were thus not “pre-planned”, the consistent granting of the loans did form a deliberate course of conduct by the accused persons over time. That said, although I found that Naza did seek to cultivate Lee, I balanced this against the fact that any planning or premeditation was limited insofar as there was no evidence that the accused persons actively offered Lee loans. The defence also submits that there was no sophistication in Razeez’s conduct, ¹¹⁵ and I agreed with this.

134 Fourth, the prosecution submitted that the duration of offending for the offences was long, with the offences committed over a year on six to seven occasions. ¹¹⁶ I agreed.

135 Fifth, the prosecution submitted that the accused persons were motivated by greed in committing the offences, in that they were financially interested in seeing SCAR’s business grow. Counsel for Naza maintained that Naza’s intent was only to help a friend with financial problems, while counsel for Razeez submitted that Razeez’s role was fundamentally a “payment-chain role”. ¹¹⁷ I have already rejected the contention that Naza was merely helping a friend or giving friendly loans, and have also rejected the submission that Razeez’s role was merely a facilitative, administrative or clerical one in the payment chain. I thus agreed with the prosecution that the accused persons were motivated by furthering SCAR’s business interests. That said, there was no evidence that allowed me to quantify this. I could therefore only give this factor limited weight.

(a) For Naza, I therefore put the starting point sentences at a short custodial term of:

(i) No less than one month’s imprisonment for the charges concerning the lower amounts of gratification; and

(ii) Up to four months’ imprisonment for the charges concerning the higher amounts of gratification.

(b) For Razeez, I put his starting point sentences at a short custodial term of:

(i) No less than three weeks’ imprisonment for the charges concerning the lower amounts of gratification; and

(ii) Up to three months’ imprisonment for the charges concerning the higher amounts of gratification.

141 Under step 4 of the sentencing framework, I was required to make adjustments to the starting point sentences to account for offender-specific factors. Since both accused persons claimed trial to their charges, there was no issue of any sentencing discount for a guilty plea.

142 The prosecution submitted that no further adjustment was required for Naza, but that a slight upward adjustment was required for Razeez, due to the manner in which he conducted his defence – in particular, his contesting of the admissibility of his statements. In this regard, the prosecution noted that Razeez had made unfounded allegations against PSI Chan, such as placing him under oppressive conditions, and fabricating portions of his statements. Judicial and prosecutorial resources were thus wasted as the ancillary hearing spanned five days and prolonged the trial unnecessarily. ¹¹⁸ Counsel for Razeez submitted that a relatively high threshold had to be met before the manner of conducting a defence could amount to an aggravating factor, such as where the defence was conducted in an extravagant and unnecessary manner or scandalous allegations were made. He also submitted that the case of PP v CQW [2025] SGHC 117 cited by the prosecution could be distinguished as that case involved belated and unjustified allegations against police officers, which led to the recall of multiple witnesses. ¹¹⁹

143 I noted that while the ancillary hearing took place over five hearing dates, a number of those were not full hearing days, and only one witness was called for each party – PSI Chan for the prosecution and Razeez for the defence. By my reckoning, each witness’ testimony (including cross-examination) lasted only about 1½ days, which could not be said to be long, since there were three statements to be dealt with. As for the allegations that Razeez made against PSI Chan, the claims of being placed under oppression by having to sit through long hours of interviews followed by the recording of statements were in fact fairly standard. As for the claims that parts of the statements had been fabricated and that Razeez’s signatures thereon had been forged, my view was that these were indeed very serious and bordered on the scandalous. Nevertheless, given that the overall conduct of Razeez’s defence otherwise consisted of the usual denials of liability and his allegations of fabrication were bare assertions, I did not think that these were so aggravating as to warrant an uplift in his sentence as sought by the prosecution. I therefore disagreed with the prosecution on this point, and took the view that Razeez’s sentence overall should remain lower than Naza’s.

144 In step 5 of the sentencing framework, I was required to make further adjustments to take into account the totality principle, as both accused persons were to be sentenced for multiple charges. Given the fairly low starting point sentences I had assigned, I did not think that any further downward adjustment was required. The prosecution submitted that for each accused person, only two imprisonment terms needed to be run consecutively, and I agreed.

145 I then noted the punishments imposed on Lee, since he was the receiver of the gratifications, and there should ordinarily be some parity in the sentences as between givers and receivers. Lee pleaded guilty to six charges, with 16 taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing. Of the charges that Lee pleaded guilty to, four mirrored those in the present trial – those concerned the First, Second, Third and Fifth Loans, which ranged from $10,000 to $15,000. For these, he received eight months’ imprisonment per charge. There was a further charge concerning a loan of $5,000, and he received four months’ imprisonment for that charge. He also faced other charges for forgery, and forgery of a valuable security. His total sentence was 12 months’ imprisonment, and he was ordered to pay a penalty of $79,676.93.

146 It was clear that Lee’s overall culpability was higher than that of Naza and Razeez, not only because he asked for the loans, but also because he faced a higher total number of charges, those charges involved a higher total amount of gratification, and the charges included offences for forgery and forgery of a valuable security. Although he pleaded guilty and his sentence would have been discounted on account of that, I did not think that the global sentences of the two accused persons should necessarily be close to what Lee received, contrary to what the prosecution contended.

147 My view therefore was that the accused persons should be sentenced as follows:

148 For Naza, I ordered the sentences in DAC 921470/2021 and DAC 921473/2021 to run consecutively (as indicated in bold font in the table above), with the remaining sentences to run concurrently. His total sentence was therefore seven months’ imprisonment.

149 For Razeez, I ordered the sentences in DAC 921458/2021 and DAC 921461/2021 to run consecutively (as indicated in bold font in the table above), with the remaining sentences to run concurrently. His total sentence was therefore five months’ imprisonment.

150 Both accused persons were granted bail pending their appeals, and a stay of execution was also granted on their respective imprisonment terms.