A former director of the National Research Foundation ( NRF ) was charged on Tuesday ( Mar. 4 ) with accepting 30 % of a company’s shares in exchange for advancing its grant application.  ,
Henry Wong Chuen Yuen, who was the chairman of programs and the center of the technology swarm at NRF under the administration of the Prime Minister’s office and a part of the job evaluation panel for the Built Environment Technology Alliance consortium, is accused of consenting to take company shares as gratification.  ,
Lee Tze Boon, who also went on trial on Monday, is accused of offering Wong’s company objectives to profit.  ,
Wong, 55, and Lee, 52, co-founded the light firm Smart Illumination in September 2018. They each held 50 % of the company’s stock as its founding executives.  ,
Wong became a superscale official and chairman at NRF in November 2018. He transferred his 50 % stake in the business to Lee in February 2019 and left the following day as director.  ,
According to the trial, Lee and Wong had a new job to create light-emitting diodes with sterilization capabilities in 2020, and the latter reportedly asked him to apply for financing from the consortium.  ,
Lee wrote to NRF in October of that year to do so.  ,
Wong was appointed to the firm’s job examination board in April 2021, which evaluates all funding applications, including those made by Smart Illumination.  ,
According to Deputy Public Prosecutors ( DPP ) Ben Tan and Darren Sim, Lee offered 30 % of the shares to Wong in May 2021, and he accepted them in exchange for his assistance with the company’s funding application.  ,
According to DPP Tan, both Wong and Lee were aware that Wong had hardly hold the shares in his own name in a WhatsApp team chat with the company’s president.  ,
When DPP Tan read out the information in court, Wong said that my name should be kept private from the public, and Lee responded,” Learned.”
According to the trial, Lee and Wong discussed ways to “park” the shares by concealing their interests and stocks in Smart Illumination with others, including Wong’s eldest daughter and Wong’s chair.  ,
Wong allegedly signed a record on May 25, 2021, stating that he had no economic or involvement with Smart Illumination or the candidates, and that the file” could become constructed as a conflict of interest.”  ,
The trial claimed the trial had not disclosed the nature of their personal or professional relationship to the screen.  ,
Wong and Lee, along with other members of the Smart Illumination staff and the job evaluation board, attended a conference held two days later to discuss the project.  ,
Wong spoke favorably of the job, the prosecution claimed, while members of the board were concerned about the program’s substantial funds and the bank’s financial viability. He also cited notes from the meeting from the meeting.  ,
The consortium’s programme office informed the panel on Smart Illumination’s application that they had requested to have approval for the funding for their project by July 15th, 2021, or that they would look for alternative sources of funding.  ,
Wong met with the then-chief technology officer of the Ministry of National Development on July 21, 2021, who will give evidence during the trial.
The panel gave its in-principle approval for the grant two days later.  ,
Wong was appointed NRF’s representative on the panel on August 23, 2021, and Smart Illumination was ultimately denied a grant.
The agency had previously been informed by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau that NRF had referred the case to them. The court documents did not specify how NRF learned about the crimes.
19 witnesses are scheduled to appear on the stand for this ongoing trial.
Wong is represented by Allen &, Gledhill LLP’s Ms. Lee May Ling and Ms. Lim Wei Ying, and Ms. Naidu Navindraram, Ms. Lynn Cheng, and Ms. Chloe Chen Wei.  ,
A fine of up to S$ 100, 000 ( US$ 74, 302 ), five years in prison, or both are the penalties for corruption.  ,