Singapore
Apr 15, 2010
Jailed for lying to ICA
<!-- by line --> By Khushwant Singh
<!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar --> <!-- story content : start --> ON NOV 25, 2003, a Chinese national by the name of Yang Xiuling was repatriated after the 24-year-old woman was caught soliciting. She was also barred from returning for one year. But it was someone else's passport and when Singaporean businessman Lye Soo Hong proposed to her, she obtained a new passport under her real name, which was Zhang Haiyu. She flew in on March 26, 2004, and the couple married a month later. To continue her stay here, Zhang, 29, applied for extensions to her visit pass with Mr Lye, 35, acting as her sponsor.
In these applications, she also declared that she had never used a different passport or name to come here and neither had she been prohibited from entering Singapore. Her lies were found out in June 2007 and Zhang was sentenced to three months in jail on Thursday for making three false statements to the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority. Seven other similar charges were considered by the district judge upon sentencing. Asking the court to exercise compassion and leniency, her lawyer Tan Kay Bin said that Zhang lied so that she could be with her husband.
Apr 15, 2010
Jailed for lying to ICA
<!-- by line --> By Khushwant Singh
<!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar --> <!-- story content : start --> ON NOV 25, 2003, a Chinese national by the name of Yang Xiuling was repatriated after the 24-year-old woman was caught soliciting. She was also barred from returning for one year. But it was someone else's passport and when Singaporean businessman Lye Soo Hong proposed to her, she obtained a new passport under her real name, which was Zhang Haiyu. She flew in on March 26, 2004, and the couple married a month later. To continue her stay here, Zhang, 29, applied for extensions to her visit pass with Mr Lye, 35, acting as her sponsor.
In these applications, she also declared that she had never used a different passport or name to come here and neither had she been prohibited from entering Singapore. Her lies were found out in June 2007 and Zhang was sentenced to three months in jail on Thursday for making three false statements to the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority. Seven other similar charges were considered by the district judge upon sentencing. Asking the court to exercise compassion and leniency, her lawyer Tan Kay Bin said that Zhang lied so that she could be with her husband.