1 The Accused, Mr Yip Kooi Keat, pleaded guilty to and was convicted on one charge under section 6(b) read with section 31 of the Prevention of Corruption Act for being a party to a criminal conspiracy with three others (“co-conspirators”) to commit corruption by giving gratification in the form of 17,647 ordinary shares of Infinity Cybersec Pte Ltd (“Infinity”) to Tan Jin Loong Adrian (“Adrian”), a senior project manager in the employ of NCS Pte Ltd (“NCS”), as inducement for advancing the business interest of Infinity with NCS.

2 The co-conspirators named in the charge were Infinity, Xu Zhanghua (“Jonas”) and Lim Sing Wei (“Max”).

3 The present case was originally fixed for trial jointly with the cases involving Infinity, Jonas and Adrian. However, the Accused pleaded guilty before the commencement of trial and the trial proceeded for the other three accused persons.

4 I sentenced the Accused to 4 months’ imprisonment on 26 January 2026 and allowed the Accused’s application to defer the commencement of his sentence to 2 February 2026. Hence, the accused remained on bail after he was sentenced.

5 The Accused, being dissatisfied with the sentence, filed an appeal on 27 January 2026. He is currently on bail pending the hearing of his appeal.

6 When pronouncing sentence, I had set out brief reasons for the sentences imposed. ¹ I shall elaborate on my reasons in these grounds.

7 The details of the charge which the Accused pleaded guilty to were as follows:

8 The Accused admitted to the facts as set out in the Statement of Facts (“SOF”) without qualification:

9 The Accused was untraced.

10 An offence under section 6(b) read with section 31 of the PCA was punishable with a fine not exceeding $100,000, or with imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years, or both.

11 The prosecution tendered written submissions indicating its sentencing position, as well as further submissions on sentence, supplemented by oral submissions in Court. The prosecution sought a fine of $30,000.

12 The prosecution began by referring to the sentencing framework for private sector corruption offences set out in Goh Ngak Eng v Public Prosecutor [2023] 4 SLR 1385 (“Goh Ngak Eng”). Under Step 1 of the framework, the prosecution identified the following main harm and culpability offence-specific factors present in this case:

(a) Factors going to harm

(i) Loss caused to the principal: NCS was deprived of a fair and transparent procurement process for 22 contracts amounting to a total value of $1,693,260. By Adrian revealing the highest price (i.e. NCS’s budget) to Infinity, the accused persons had deprived NCS of a lower bid.

(ii) Benefit to the giver of gratification: The prosecution submitted that the benefit to the giver of the gratification in this case would be the 22 contracts which were subsequently awarded to Infinity and the profit derived therefrom, as well as the confidential information provided by Adrian.

(iii) Loss caused to third parties: Other contractors which had placed bids in the tender exercise for the NCS contracts had lost a fair chance to be considered for the tender. This was because Adrian had provided the quotation prices of other competing vendors to Infinity, conferring Infinity with an unfair advantage.

(iv) Offence committed as part of a group: In their oral submissions, the prosecution took the view that the offence was committed as part of a group and that the Accused took part in the decision-making process and agreed to offer Adrian the shares.

(b) Factors going to culpability

(i) Amount of gratification: Although the share transfer to Adrian was not carried out, the 15% shareholding in Infinity would translate to 15% of the $538,150 profits generated by Infinity, which amounted to $80,722.50.

(ii)  Duration of offending: The conspirators carried out the scheme over a period of close to two years from February 2020, after the execution of the share transfer agreement by Adrian. However, with regard to the Accused, his period of offending was about a year, that is, until December 2020, or when he stepped down as the director of Infinity in March 2021.

(iii) Degree of planning and premeditation: The prosecution submitted that there was substantive degree of planning and premeditation. The conspirators had approached Adrian knowing that he had influence over the projects he was handling, had a say in relation to the vendors that could bid for the projects, and knew specific information pertaining to the projects, including their budgets.

(iv) Offender’s motive in committing the offence: All the conspirators stood to benefit directly from Infinity’s contracts with NCS.

(v) Role played by the offender in the corrupt transaction: The prosecution submitted that the Accused carried out active steps in facilitating the corrupt transaction by amending the shareholding structure of Infinity and signing the share transfer document.

13 Following from the above, the prosecution submitted that the case overall fell within the “moderate harm / medium culpability” category, with the indicative sentencing range of 1 to 2 years’ imprisonment.

14 Under Step 3, the prosecution was of the view that, vis-à-vis the Accused, the present case fell within the lower end of the “moderate harm / medium culpability” category (or the higher end of the “lower culpability / moderate harm” category) with the starting sentence of about 1 year’s imprisonment. The prosecution explained that this was because the Accused’s culpability was lower than the co-conspirators based on the following facts:

(a) The Accused had resigned from Infinity in December 2020 and stepped down as the company director on 31 March 2021 without taking his share of the profit;

(b) The Accused was only personally involved in nine out of the total 22 contracts which NCS had awarded to Infinity. Hence, the benefit derived by the Accused was the lowest amongst the givers of the gratification;

(c) It was Jonas who intended to recruit Adrian to join Infinity and who negotiated the terms of the share transfer with Adrian. The Accused was not the initiator of the corruption transaction and was convinced by Jonas and Max to offer the bribe to Adrian.

15 In Step 4, the prosecution urged the Court to accord the Accused a significant reduction in sentence on account of his plea of guilt and submitted that there were exceptional factors which warranted the Court to approach the assessment of the amount of reduction in a qualitative rather than quantitative manner. The prosecution emphasised that the Accused was the first amongst the four accused persons to plead guilty, albeit before the eve of the trial. Hence, he had, to some extent, saved the criminal justice system resources by reducing the length of the trial. Furthermore, the Accused would be a crucial prosecution witness in the ongoing trial against the three co-accused. The prosecution then cited Public Prosecutor v Teo Yaw Tiong Ignatuis [2005] SGDC 196 (“Ignatuis Teo”) and asked the Court to consider that the Accused’s agreement to stand as prosecution witness in the trial as a mitigating factor which justified a disparity in sentence. Based on the above considerations, the prosecution submitted that a fine would suffice in this case.

16 The prosecution also informed the Court that they had extended a plea offer to the Accused based on the same sentencing position advanced in their submissions. Although the prosecution had initially sought the "maximum fine" of $30,000 in their written submissions, when the Court subsequently clarified to both parties that the District Court had jurisdiction to impose the full statutory punishment for offences under the PCA, the prosecution maintained their original sentencing position, explaining that this reflected the terms of the offer made to the Accused.

17 The defence tendered a written plea-in-mitigation incorporating their submissions on sentence, as well as further supplemental submissions on sentence, and sought a fine of $20,000.

18 Pursuant to steps one to three of the framework in Goh Ngak Eng, the defence argued that the case fell into the lowest end of the “low harm / low culpability” category, where the appropriate sentence should be a fine. This was due to the following features of the case:

19 As for the quantification of the fine, the defence contended that case law had been consistent in treating the quantum of the bribe involved as highly relevant. In support of its position, the defence referred to [25] of Goh Ngak Eng where the High Court set out a table summarising the final sentences meted out by the lower court as against the amount of gratification involved. The defence argued that as the open market value of the shares in the present case was zero, this clearly pointed towards a fine.

20 Turning to the offender-specific factors, the defence reiterated that the Accused was the first of four accused persons to plead guilty and would be a prosecution witness. In their oral submissions before the Court, the defence emphasised that the Accused had, from the very first statement he gave to the investigators, and in all his subsequent statements, made a clean breast of the entire affair. In their supplemental sentencing submissions, the defence stressed that this was a complex case involving corporate transactions spanning multiple years, entailing copious documentary evidence. The prosecution had no direct witness of the facts pertaining to the alleged corruption offence until it succeeded in procuring the Accused’s testimony as an insider. The defence submitted that the Accused was effectively the prosecution’s star witness who could give a thorough narrative of the facts of the entire case as well as explain the meaning and context of each piece of documentary evidence. The defence argued that the Accused was therefore akin to a whistleblower as he demonstrated remorse by helping the prosecution prove the criminality of others beyond a reasonable doubt, thereby lightening the prosecution’s burden considerably. Referring to the cases of Public Prosecutor v Ang Seng Thor [2011] 4 SLR 217 (“Ang Seng Thor”), Public Prosecutor v Siew Boon Loong [2005] 1 SLR(R) 611 and Public Prosecutor v Peter Khoo Chong Meng [2012] SGDC 453, the defence urged the Court to accord the same mitigating weight to the Accused’s plea of guilt (and offering himself as a prosecution witness) as that afforded to a whistleblower. The defence submitted that it was in the interest of public policy and the criminal justice system to actively incentivise and encourage an offender to confess his guilt and disclose the facts of the offence by testifying for the prosecution. This could be done by granting very substantial mitigatory considerations to the Accused and imposing a “merciful sentence”. Conversely, it would be contrary to the administration of justice to penalise such an accused by sentencing him severely “on par as the primary plotters who devised the corrupt scheme and gained all the profits and advantages”.

21 The defence added that the Accused was a very resourceful and highly driven technopreneur from Malaysia who based his numerous high tech business ventures in Singapore. Since leaving Infinity, the Accused launched a series of technological companies.

22 The defence also revealed that the Accused suffered from a rare inherited renal disease which had no cure and asked for judicial mercy to be extended to him.

23 Finally, the defence pointed to the prosecution’s submission for a fine of $30,000 and argued that this was a carefully weighed and considered decision on the prosecution’s part. The defence was of the view that this indicated the “immense value and contribution” the prosecution expected from the Accused and therefore asked the Court to take this into account as a “weighty and relevant consideration”.

24 In calibrating the appropriate sentence in this case, I was mindful that the sentencing positions taken by the parties, including any representations made by the prosecution on its sentencing position and any understanding on sentence or plea agreement that the parties had reached, were not binding on the Court and had no bearing on the sentence the Court may impose: CRH v Public Prosecutor [2024] 1 SLR 998 at [38] and [40]. In fact, the argument that the Court should accord due weight to the prosecution’s sentencing position and the plea agreement when determining the appropriate sentence was wholly rejected by the High Court in Oh Hin Kwan Gilbert v Public Prosecutor [2025] 3 SLR 483 at [33].

25 It was undisputed that the sentencing guidelines promulgated in Goh Ngak Eng were directly applicable to the present case. Hence, in assessing sentence, I applied the two-stage, five-step framework established in Goh Ngak Eng.

26 At Step 1 of the Goh Ngak Eng framework, I began by identifying the level of harm and culpability in this case by considering the offence-specific factors that were engaged.

27 In relation to the loss caused to the principal, the Court in Goh Ngak Eng referred to the decision in Public Prosecutor v Wong Chee Meng and another appeal [2020] 5 SLR 807 at [64] and cautioned that detriment to the principal could arise in a number of different ways: Goh Ngak Eng at [60(a)].

28 In this case, I considered the cultivation of Adrian, as an insider in NCS, to be detrimental to NCS, given that Adrian had the authority, amongst other things, to onboard companies to NCS’ list of approved vendors. Adrian also had access to confidential information such as the pricing of quotations submitted by vendors as well as the indicative pricing pegged to NCS’s budget for each project ² .

29 Indeed, while the facts before the Court did not reveal any actual pecuniary loss to NCS, I agreed with the prosecution that NCS was deprived of a fair and transparent procurement process. In particular, Adrian had revealed to the Accused, Jonas and Max NCS’s budget for upcoming projects, which served as the upper limited for Infinity’s bid and deprived NCS of a lower bid from Infinity ³ .

30 As held by the High Court in Goh Ngak Eng, any benefit to the giver of the gratification should be viewed separately from harm suffered by the principal. While the benefit obtained would often take the form of profits realised by the giver, there were other less readily apparent but nonetheless very valuable benefits that the giver may derive from the corrupt transaction: Goh Ngak Eng at [60(b)].

31 Based on the facts admitted by the Accused, I was of the view that the benefit to the conspirators in this case would include the information provided by Adrian on upcoming projects secured or likely to be secured by NCS, NCS’s budget for such projects, and quotations submitted by competing vendors. Infinity also benefitted from Adrian’s advice on which projects they should tender for in NCS as well as the best price to bid for certain projects, and from being introduced by Adrian to other project managers working in NCS such that they would invite Infinity to submit bids for other projects ⁴ .

32 The facts of the case showed that as a result of the corrupt arrangement, Infinity was able to secure a total of 22 contracts between February 2020 and October 2021 from NCS, its main client. Indeed, on 8 January 2020, two days after the Accused and Adrian signed the share transfer document, Adrian told his colleague to raise a request to award the NCS project with LTA (later named “LTA AIAs Trendmicro PS” project) to Infinity. Adrian also directed his colleague to indicate Infinity as the “preferred vendor” and provided her with quotations from two other companies which had submitted higher bids ⁵ . Additionally, the “Carbon Black PS IHIS ASOC” project, one of the Integrated Health Information System projects, was awarded by NCS to Infinity at $522, 000 (subsequently revised to $454,000) without seeking two additional quotations. When questioned by a procurement manager, Adrian defended the award by claiming, amongst other things, that Infinity’s competitors had no resources to support the project and that Infinity had provided their “best competitive rate” ⁶ .

33 I also agreed with the prosecution that there was loss caused to third parties by Adrian conferring an unfair advantage on Infinity as against other vendors who had submitted quotations to tender for projects.

34 Additionally, based on the charge and the facts admitted by the Accused, the present offence was clearly committed by the Accused as part of a group. The Accused, the sole registered director and shareholder of Infinity, had acted in concert with Jonas and Max who were an employee ⁷ and an ex-employee ⁸ of NCS respectively and shadow directors of Infinity at the material time. This aggravated the level of harm: Goh Ngak Eng at [60(d)].

35 I next turn to the offence-specific factors relating to culpability.

36 In considering the amount of gratification offered in this case, I had regard to the “Valuation of Infinity Cybersec Pte Ltd” report dated 25 February 2025 submitted by the defence with the mitigation plea. The report concluded that Infinity was of “zero value” as at 31 January 2020 because, amongst other things, it had no customer contracts or invoices, no revenue or billings to customers, the bank current account only had $1000, and the issued share capital was unpaid and recorded as owing from the shareholder ⁹ .

37 In my view, the amount of gratification should not be quantified solely by reference to the value of the shares offered by the Accused and his fellow conspirators to Adrian as at 31 January 2020, before any projects were awarded to Infinity by NCS.

38 As set out in the Statement of Facts at [14], the gratification was not so much the value of the shares per se, but rather that Adrian would be given 15% of Infinity’s dividends, corresponding to his shareholding, if Infinity were to make a profit. In essence, the more successful Infinity became, the larger the reward would be for Adrian. Indeed, as a result of the corrupt arrangement, Infinity grew from a zero-value startup to one which had more than half-a-million dollars in profits in its bank account ¹⁰ .

39 I agreed with the prosecution that the facts admitted by the Accused demonstrated substantial planning and premeditation on the part of the conspirators.

40 The facts revealed that the Accused was informed by Jonas and Max that Adrian could help Infinity get jobs from NCS, and he agreed with the plan to recruit Adrian. When Adrian expressed dissatisfaction with the initial offer, all three of them agreed to make a counter-offer to Adrian before taking steps to effect the agreed share transfer.

41 As for the duration of offending on the Accused’s part, this spanned the period from December 2019 (the inception of the conspiracy) to March 2021 when he last submitted Infinity’s quotation to NCS and stepped down as Infinity’s director ¹¹ .

42 With regard to the extent of abuse of position and breach of trust, while such breach was committed by Adrian, the Accused and his co-conspirators were aware of his position as a senior project manager in NCS and had sought to leverage this abuse to their benefit.

43 The Accused and his co-conspirators were undoubtedly motivated by greed. Infinity was a new company with no track record and they had clearly hatched the plan to recruit Adrian so as to obtain jobs for Infinity.

44 Turning to the role played by the Accused, while I agreed with both parties that Jonas was the initiator of the corrupt transaction who seeded the idea of recruiting Adrian to join Infinity and persuaded the rest to agree to the plan, the facts showed that it was the Accused who first approached Adrian on behalf of Infinity with the offer of shares. He also played a key role in facilitating the share transfer, including arranging to increase Infinity’s share capital and signing the share transfer document with Adrian ¹² .

45 On the other hand, I considered, in the Accused’s favour, that out of the 22 contracts valued in excess of $1.6 million awarded by NCS to Infinity, the Accused was only involved in nine contracts valued at approximately $600,000 where he submitted Infinity’s quotations to NCS after calculating the profit margin and relying on information supplied by Adrian. He then proceeded to manage and deliver five of these projects.

46 In Step 2 of the Goh Ngak Eng framework, having carefully considered the offence-specific factors, I assessed the Accused’s culpability to be at the upper end of low and the harm caused at the lower level of moderate. The applicable indicative sentencing range would therefore be 6 to 12 months’ imprisonment. I disagreed with the defence’s submissions that the case should be situated in the low culpability / low harm range. Whilst the defence had focused on the absence of certain aggravating factors such as public disquiet, the involvement of a transnational element or strategic industry, public health or safety risks, or actual harm to NCS, this did not necessarily imply that the case would fall at the lowest end of the culpability / harm matrix.

47 In Step 3 of the framework, based on my assessment of the various harm and culpability factors at [26] to [45], I determined that the appropriate starting point should be at the lower end of the indicative sentencing range and that a starting sentence of 7 months’ imprisonment would be appropriate for the Accused.

48 Next, I turned to consider the factors personal to the Accused’s particular circumstances.

49 In this regard, I took into consideration the fact that the Accused had tendered his resignation in December 2020, stepped down as a director of Infinity on 31 March 2021, and relinquished all his shares in the company in May 2021, without taking any part of the company’s profits. I noted that the Accused had apparently done so of his own accord, well before Adrian was terminated by NCS in December 2021. In my view, this was a strong mitigating factor in the Accused’s favour.

50 It was also not disputed that the Accused was cooperative during investigations and had divulged details of the corrupt scheme in his statements.

51 I also considered, to the Accused’s credit, the fact that he had pleaded guilty before the commencement of trial and would be called to testify as a key prosecution witness in what was undoubtedly a complex trial. In their submissions, the defence urged the Court to consider the Accused akin to a whistleblower. Whilst I agreed with the parties that appropriate mitigating weight should be accorded to the Accused for his guilty plea and willingness to testify against his co-conspirators, the Accused had elected to do so only after filing his Case for the Defence and when trial was imminent. Hence, it would not be appropriate to equate him with a whistleblower who exposed previously unknown criminal activity or confessed his guilt to the authorities even before investigations had caught up with him. The High Court in Ang Seng Thor had similar concerns when it disapproved of the lower court characterising the offender as a whistleblower. This was because the offender only admitted personal wrongdoing when he was placed under investigations and did not at any point voluntarily contact the CPIB or other appropriate authority: Ang Seng Thor at [56] to [61].

52 In calibrating sentence, I also had regard to the defence’s request for judicial mercy to be extended to the Accused based on his diagnosis for Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease. According to the defence, the Accused had been told that the condition would shorten his remaining life expectancy to 30 to 40 years. In considering whether the Court should exercise judicial mercy and depart from the sentencing norms in this case, I was guided by the decision of the three-judge coram of the High Court in Chew Soo Chun v Public Prosecutor and another appeal [2016] 2 SLR 78 (“Chew Soo Chun”). At [38] of Chew Soo Chun, the Court noted that judicial mercy was an exceptional recourse available for truly exceptional cases and which would likely result in an exceptional sentence. Further, where such mercy was exercised, the court would be compelled by humanitarian considerations arising from the exceptional circumstances to order the minimum imprisonment term or a non-custodial sentence where appropriate. In my view, there was no evidence that the Accused’s condition was such that it would lead to an endangerment of his life by reason of imprisonment: Chew Soo Chun at [27]. There was also no evidence to indicate that the Accused’s medical condition was so severe such that a term of incarceration would cause him far greater and disproportionate impact than it would on an ordinary person who was not suffering from the same condition: Chew Soo Chun at [29]. Finally, there was nothing to suggest that the prisons were unable to address the Accused’s medical needs to an acceptable standard. Hence, I determined that the Accused’s medical condition should be considered a neutral factor in sentencing: Chew Soo Chun at [39].

53 Taking the offender-specific mitigating factors into consideration, and bearing in mind that the Accused’s plea of guilty, without more, would have warranted a 10% reduction in sentence based on the Guidelines for Reduction in Sentences for Guilty Pleas issued by the Sentencing Advisory Panel, I calibrated the sentence downwards from the starting point of 7 months to 4 months’ imprisonment.

54 In calibrating sentence, I carefully considered the parties’ submissions that a fine would be the appropriate punishment for the Accused. In particular, the prosecution submitted for a starting sentence of one year’s imprisonment on account of the Accused’s culpability and the harm caused by the offence, but asked that the Court take into consideration the fact that the Accused had pleaded guilty and would be a prosecution witness to grant a substantial reduction in sentence and impose a fine. The prosecution cited the case of Ignatuis Teo in support of its position. Having considered the decision in that case, I was of the view that it did not advance the prosecution’s arguments very far. The offender in that case had initially claimed trial. He pleaded guilty on the first day of trial to six charges with 12 other charges taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing. He was sentenced to a total term of 60 months’ imprisonment. His accomplice had pleaded guilty to five charges and had nine other charges taken into consideration for sentencing and was sentenced to a total term of 36 months’ imprisonment. The fact that the accomplice had agreed to be a prosecution witness was but one of the factors cited by the Court in explaining the disparity in sentence. The Court highlighted other significant differences in circumstances between the offender and the accomplice. These included the fact that the accomplice had made full restitution of her share of illegal gain whilst the offender had failed to make any, the fact that the accomplice had provided full cooperation with the authorities since her arrest, and that she had indicated her plea of guilt from the earliest pre-trial conference: Ignatuis Teo at [27] to [30]. In the present case, I had taken similar factors into consideration in according the Accused a substantial reduction of the sentence at Step 4 of the Goh Ngak Eng framework. However, the mitigating factors in the present case were far from being so exceptional as to warrant the reduction to a fine sought by the prosecution.

55 The Accused was sentenced to 4 months’ imprisonment.