SINGAPORE: The director of a wholesale fish company allowed his employee to bribe a team leader at supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice, the fish wholesaler’s biggest customer, and even concocted a plan to disguise the corrupt payments.
Chew Kim Hwee, 48, was sentenced to seven months and two weeks’ jail on Monday (Jun 19).
He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to give bribes to former NTUC FairPrice senior team leader Lim Kian Kok, with another charge taken into consideration.
The court heard that Chew was the director and majority shareholder of Fish Vision Agro-tech, which operated a market stall at Jurong Fishery Port.
Chew’s employee, 44-year-old Malaysian Ngow Chun Siong, worked at the stall, transporting the fish, selling and packing them.
Around February 2020, Ngow asked Lim if he could buy more fish from Fish Vision.
Lim asked what he would receive if he did so, and Ngow understood that the FairPrice employee wanted money in exchange for more business with Fish Vision.
Ngow then sought Chew’s approval for the bribes.
Chew agreed to offer Lim 20 cents for each kg of fish that Lim bought from Fish Vision on behalf of NTUC FairPrice.
The arrangement began in February 2020 and lasted until September of that year. Ngow would claim the bribe money from Fish Vision by submitting claims for “labour charges for the packing of fish” in his daily profit and loss reports.
This idea was conceived by Chew, who wanted to cover up the bribes. Fish Vision’s administrative manager would process the claims, which Chew would approve and pay the sums to Ngow from the wholesaler’s petty cash account.
In total, Ngow handed Lim about S$24,900 in envelopes of cash for the corrupt scheme.
Before the arrangement began, Lim would purchase about 200kg of fish per day from Fish Vision on behalf of NTUC FairPrice.
After he started receiving bribes, the amount doubled or tripled to about 400 to 600kg per day.
During investigations, Chew said that Fish Vision obtained a monthly profit of S$8,000 to S$10,000 from sales to FairPrice during the span of the corrupt arrangement.
The prosecution asked for eight to 12 months’ jail for Chew, saying that Chew was more culpable than Ngow as he was Ngow’s superior and devised the idea of disguising the corrupt payments.
Ngow had been sentenced to seven months’ jail for his role. Lim, who had approached other suppliers for bribes, received four years and five months’ jail and a penalty of nearly S$290,000.
Chew was allowed to begin his jail term next week.