PAP spent $1 million to get PWC partners to audit WP TC and came out with no evidence of wrong doing. They just cited possibilities.
Why doesn't the PAP apply the same standard? Call in PWC partners to investigate PA and NEA? More money involved in these two instances.
The Admiralty CCC Chairman who was under investigation by the People’s Association reportedly resigned from his post on Wednesday (15 Jul). Since then, the media have identified him as Tonic Oh Thai Nan.
The Auditor-General’s Office (AGO) recently reported that during its audit, it found irregularities in procurement and payment at a Citizens’ Consultative Committee (CCC) (‘Admiralty CCC Chairman resigns over irregularities‘).
AGO found that a Chairman of the CCC was involved in awarding 2 contracts (totalling $32,000) to a company of which he was a member of the senior management. For one of the contracts, another CCC member involved in the approval process was both a director and shareholder of the company.
The Chairman also approved payment for a purchase (amounting to $1,500) from another company of which he was both a director and shareholder.
In the above cases, the Chairman and the CCC member did not declare the conflict of interest in these transactions.
AGO test-checked 41 payments at the said CCC and found 7 instances where the Chairman was involved in approving his own claims (totalling $114,767). PA then claimed that the Chairman had “inadvertently” approved his own claims. In other words, it was a “mistake”.
MP for Sembawang GRC Khaw Boon Wan later came out to acknowledge that the grassroots leader in question was from Admiralty CCC. He also defended the CCC Chairman saying that there was “no evidence of dishonesty”.
“I am glad that the Investigation Panel found no evidence of dishonesty. Nonetheless, it was a related party transaction that was not declared,” Mr Khaw said in a statement. “The CCC will study the investigation report, and review its procedures to ensure that such lapses do not recur.”
Fellow MP for Sembawang GRC Vikram Nair said he was saddened to learn of the findings by AGO and that the grassroots leader concerned has “served with distinction for many years”.
Ex-CCC Chairman sued by “girlfriend”
Online checks show that Mr Tonic Oh was once sued by his former girlfriend. In a court judgment in 2003 [Link], it was revealed that he and his then girlfriend Erica Chua Siew Moi had entered into a distribution business provided by Multi-Tech Distribution and Services Pte Ltd.
Ms Chua alleged that $550,000 was lent to Mr Oh for the business and she was only repaid $169,300. As such, Mr Oh still owed her $380,700. Both were directors and shareholders of the company.
Mr Oh’s defence was that $200,000 of the $550,000 constituted Ms Chua’s investment in the company while $130,000 was a loan to it.
He denied that the $169,300 was a partial repayment of the $550,000 “loans” as alleged by Ms Chua. He said that the payment was made in connection with dealings between him and Ms Chua in connection to a recruitment agency and to equipment purchased, and the payment was made to clear accounts between them in those dealings.
“There was no record of any kind produced to show the recruitment agency/equipment accounts or to show that the payment of $169,300 squared the accounts,” the judge however noted.
The judge also noted:
In the course of the hearing the defendant (Tonic Oh) sought to fortify his case with the company’s financial records to show that the payments the plaintiff (Ms Chua) made were received and treated by the company as loans. He filed a further affidavit and exhibited what purported to be a part of the company’s general ledger. He deposed he had just managed to retrieve it and was unable to produce it earlier because of the multitude of company’s records. The ledger was for loans from the plaintiff to the company in June-December 1998.
A witness was called to explain the ledger. He was Tan Sing Lin, a freelance accounts clerk who prepared the general ledger. It transpired from his evidence that the ledger entries were not made contemporaneously with the transactions in 1998. Tan revealed that all the entries were made by him only a few months previously, on the instructions of the defendant (Tonic Oh) who instructed him the payments were loans.
Tan’s evidence did not assist the defendant at all. It only lead to further questions. Why were the entries not made contemporaneously in 1998? If the ledger was prepared a few months previously by Tan, why was it not disclosed earlier in the action? Why were the pay-in slips for these payments which Tan said were shown to him not disclosed or produced even at the late stage of the proceedings?
After reviewing the evidence, the judge ruled that Mr Oh should repay Ms Chua $166,700 after discounting $200,000 for her investment in the company and $14,000 she had received from Mr Oh earlier.
7 businesses connected to ex-CCC Chairman terminated or struck off
ACRA checks show that all 7 business entities which Mr Tonic Oh has been involved in, have either been terminated or struck off from ACRA’s business registry:
Gate Technology Pte Ltd
Registered in Feb 1979
Status: Struck off in Mar 2009
Activity: Electrical Works
Position: Director of company with shareholdings of $90,000
Fima Trading Company
Registered in Sep 1981
Status: Terminated in Aug 1982
Activity: Manufacture of Garments, Wholesale of Adult Apparel
Position: Owner
Tons Construction Coy
Registered in Oct 1983
Status: Terminated in Sep 1986
Activity: Construction of Civil Engineering Projects
Position: Owner
Multi-Tech Distribution & Services Pte Ltd
Registered in Mar 1987
Status: Struck off in Apr 2010
Activity: Wholesale of Office Machines and Equipment
Position: Director of company with shareholdings of $217,150
NKS Machinery Pte Ltd
Registered in Sep 2003
Status: Struck off in Oct 2007
Activity: Wholesale and Rental of Construction Equipment
Position: Director of company
United Consortium (Singapore) Pte Ltd
Registered in Apr 2005
Status: Struck off in Sep 2006
Activity: Investment Holding Company, Restaurant
Position: Secretary of company
Thai Ning Trading Pte Ltd
Registered in Apr 2010
Status: Struck off in Dec 2014
Activity: General Wholesale Trade, Import and Export of Tobacco & Wine
Position: Director of company with shareholdings of $150,000
In the AGO’s 2014/15 report, AGO highlighted that the CCC Chairman had approved payment for a purchase from a company of which he was both a director and shareholder. The company is likely to be Thai Ning Trading Pte Ltd, since it was the only company belonging to him which was in operation between 2014 and 2015.
Ex-CCC Chairman is Business Development Director of CPC Construction
AGO also mentioned that Mr Oh was a senior management member of a company. Through online searches, TR Emeritus (TRE) has found that Mr Oh was indeed the Business Development Director/Public Relation Officer of CPC Construction Pte Ltd.
Through web services provided by aihitdata.com, CPC Construction was found to have deleted his name from its website very recently, which was on 17 July (US time). About 2 months ago on 21 May, his title was changed from Business Development Director to Public Relation Officer by CPC Construction [Link]:
Aihitdata.com is a massive, automated AI system that has been trained to build and update company information from the web. Aihitdata’s servers scour the Internet continually, 24/7, constantly monitoring and updating company data. It monitors and understands the changes that occur on company websites and records these as time series transactions.
As it is, Mr Oh’s name is no longer present on CPC Construction’s website [Link]:
However, through another Internet innovation, one can still find the old archived webpages of CPC Construction. The following screenshot is of a page in April 2015, when he was still the Business Development Director of the company [Link]:
Singapore high on Crony-Capitalism Index
The Crony-Capitalism Index is a measurement of crony capitalism designed by The Economist newspaper based on the “work by Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Aditi Gandhi and Michael Walton of New Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research, and others” in 2014. It aims to indicate whether the livelihood of the people from a certain country or city with a capitalist economy is easily affected by crony capitalism.
Not surprisingly, Singapore was ranked 5th in the world last year in terms of practising crony-capitalism [Link], as evidenced by what the AGO has found in its audits of the grassroots organisations (GROs) in Singapore.
PA is a statutory board overseeing the GROs in Singapore. The GROs include Citizens’ Consultative Committees (CCC), Community Club/Centre Management Committees (CCMC), Residents’ Committees (RC) and their sub-committees. PA sets the Financial Rules for GROs and provides administrative support for them, among other things.
The relationship between PA and PAP is a close one. The chairman of PA is none other than the PM himself, who is also the Secretary-General of PAP.
The late Lee Kuan Yew once said that the PRCs have been sending teams of officials from China to study Singapore for years. He told of a lesson the Chinese learnt, “They discover that the People’s Action Party has only a small office in Bedok. But everywhere they go, they see the PAP – in the RCs, CCCs and CCs.”
New financial measures must not scare off grassroots volunteers
Meanwhile, in a statement yesterday (16 Jul), PA said that a review by the newly formed Grassroots Finance Review Committee to rectify procurement lapses flagged by AGO will take 3 months.
PA said it has appointed Timothy de Souza, a trustee of the Eurasian Association of Singapore and grassroots leader, to be the chairman of the newly formed committee. The committee will review and recommend refinements to financial and procurement rules and procedures, especially with regard to AGO’s observations.
It will also propose measures to enhance compliance of financial rules and recommend measures to strengthen monitoring by staff, PA said.
Mr de Souza said an important consideration is that the changes must not be so onerous on grassroots leaders that these volunteers no longer want to serve the community.
