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Huawei account director, engineer at Singapore's health tech agency among 3 charged with corruption
The alleged offences revolve around giving or obtaining bribes as inducements to advance business interests.
Daphne Yow
22 Jan 2025 09:23AM (Updated: 22 Jan 2025 04:34PM)
SINGAPORE: Three Singaporean men, including a Huawei account director and an engineer at Singapore's health tech agency, were charged with corruption as well as offences that include cheating on Wednesday (Jan 22).
Their alleged offences revolve around giving or obtaining bribes as inducements to advance business interests.
Peng Ming, the Huawei employee, was given four charges of corruptly giving gratifications, of which three are amalgamated. He also faces one count of cheating.
Ng Kah Siang, an engineer at Integrated Health Systems Information (IHiS), is accused of attempting to obtain S$20,000 (US$14,700) in bribes from Peng in November 2021. He faces five counts of corruptly obtaining gratifications.
This was done as an inducement to advance Huawei's business interests with IHiS, the charge read.
IHiS has since been rebranded as Synapxe. It is a subsidiary of MOH Holdings, a holding company of Singapore's public healthcare institutions that sits under the Ministry of Health.
Ng, 37, also allegedly attempted to obtain gratification of 1 per cent of a vendor's sales revenue and at least S$20,000 from a second vendor, as inducements to advance their business interests with IHiS, said the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB).
Peng, 39, is accused of deceiving Huawei into believing that Ng and his wife were directors of IHiS in February 2022. This was done to intentionally induce Huawei to approve a sponsored trip to Paris for the couple, the agency added.
Between Mar 11 and Mar 20, 2022, Peng and the third accused Chiang Chee Seng - a senior sales director at Nera Telecommunications - allegedly conspired to give Ng and his wife gratification in the form of the Paris trip, which was valued at about S$18,265.
This was done as an inducement to advance the business interests of Huawei and Nera with IHiS, CPIB said.
"On several occasions between 2020 to 2022, Peng had also allegedly corruptly given gratification of about S$300 for each occasion in the form of entertainment to an engineer employed with IHiS, as an inducement to advance the business interests of Huawei with IHiS," the agency added.
Ng is also accused of attempting to obtain gratification of 1 per cent of Nera's sales revenue from Chiang on another occasion to further advance the business interests of the communications solutions provider with IHiS.
Chiang, 50, was handed one count of corruptly giving gratifications.
All three men have yet to indicate if they will plead guilty or claim trial.
Only Chiang was represented by a lawyer, who asked for more time to take instructions from her client.
The trio's case will be heard again on Mar 5.
"Singapore adopts a strict zero-tolerance approach towards corruption," said CPIB.
"Organisations are strongly advised to put in place robust procedures, in areas such as procurement and internal audit, to prevent falling victim to corrupt acts by their employees."
In response to CNA's queries, Huawei said on Wednesday that Peng had not been with the company since early 2023.
When asked about steps it has taken to guard against graft, Huawei says it has a zero-tolerance policy towards corruption and bribery and that it continues to develop and enhance its existing systems and capabilities.
"We have established compliance monitoring procedures that review the effectiveness of our risk controls and drive improvement of the company's anti-bribery system and the closed-loop management of compliance issues.
"The combination of these efforts allows us to effectively control anti-bribery compliance risks across the company," Huawei said.
Synapxe told CNA that it had "immediately" initiated a full review at the time of the incident. Ng has not been employed by Synapxe since May 2022, it added.
"His actions did not result in any financial loss or procurement irregularities and the integrity of our operations remains uncompromised.
"As the case is before the courts, we are unable to comment further."
A corruption offence attracts a penalty of five years’ jail or a fine of up to S$100,000, or both.
Additional reporting by Davina Tham.
