SINGAPORE: A director of a consultancy firm took advantage of a professional conversion programme funded by Workforce Singapore by conspiring with his workers to inflate their salaries on paper in order to get more grants from the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF).
Malaysian Lim De Xian, 33, pleaded guilty on Friday (Feb 24) to two charges of cheating. Another two counts of falsifying payslips and an employment contract will be considered in sentencing.
The court heard that Lim was the sole director of 7W Consultancy. His co-accused, 33-year-old Singaporean Xu Shaowen, was a general manager and shareholder of the firm.
In 2017 and 2018, the pair conspired to cheat the SNEF into disbursing grants under the professional conversion programme.
The programme is funded by Workforce Singapore and administered by the SNEF. It helps mid-career professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) who are Singapore citizens or permanent residents to undergo skills conversion and take up new jobs.
Depending on the type of programme, PMETs would undergo training ranging from three to 24 months.
Lim’s company applied for the three-month place-and-train professional conversion programme for Singapore citizens below the age of 40, where the worker will be hired by a participating company before undergoing training to take on the new job role.
Participating companies receive salary support and course fee funding based on a percentage of the worker’s fixed monthly salary, subject to a cap.
Lim and Xu first conspired to cheat the SNEF into giving them grants by inflating Xu’s salary.
Xu’s gross monthly salary from 7W Consultancy at the time was about S$1,250, but they agreed to indicate in the application that he drew S$5,800 instead.
Xu studied the programme application criteria to determine the amount of salary to falsely declare, and fixed the amount so that 7W Consultancy would receive the maximum salary support of S$4,000 per month for three months.
Lim signed on the application form containing the false declaration and it was submitted together with falsified payslips and an employment contract.
The SNEF was deceived into disbursing a salary grant of S$12,000 to 7W Consultancy in May 2018 and a course fee grant of S$1,995 to SNEF’s Corporate Learning Centre.
Around April 2018, Xu and Lim conspired with a third person – 32-year-old China national Chen Xian Yi – to get more grants.
Chen was working as an IT manager at 7W Consultancy and was also a shareholder.
The trio similarly conspired to inflate Chen’s salary and indicated in his programme application that he was earning S$5,600, even though he earned less than that.
Court documents did not indicate how much he earned.
Xu submitted Chen’s application form and a falsified employment contract to SNEF by email in April 2018.
Had the application been approved, SNEF would have been cheated into giving a salary grant of S$11,760 to 7W Consultancy and a course fee grant of S$2,051.
However, for reasons not explained in court documents, Chen asked Xu to withdraw the application. It was withdrawn before any grants were disbursed.
7W Consultancy has since made full restitution of S$13,995 to Workforce Singapore.
Lim, who is represented by lawyer S S Dhillon, will return to court for mitigation and sentencing next month.
Xu was sentenced to 13 weeks’ jail for his involvement in November.