High Court upholds acquittal of Chinese company accused of bribing ex-LTA deputy group director
The High Court has upheld the acquittal of a Chinese company that was charged with bribery after two of its employees gave loans totalling $220,000 to a Land Transport Authority (LTA) deputy group director.
In a written judgment on May 29, the court said there was insufficient evidence to show that the company's top management was aware of or somehow complicit in the illegal acts.
The Singapore branch of China Railway Tunnel Group was first acquitted of three corruption charges by a district judge in March 2024 on grounds that the two employees' acts could not be attributed to the company.
Xi Zhengbing, who was the general manager and head representative of the branch, and Zhou Zhenghe, who was a deputy general manager, gave the loans to Henry Foo Yung Thye between January 2018 and August 2019.
The district judge said Xi did not have a sufficiently high level in the chain of command. The Singapore branch is only one of the sub-departments within the company's overseas department, which is in turn only one department in the company's corporate structure.
The prosecution appealed to the High Court against the acquittal.
On May 29, the appeal was dismissed by a panel comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice Tay Yong Kwang and Justice Andrew Phang.
The court also noted that Xi and Zhou had resorted to defrauding the company with false invoices to obtain the $200,000 that was given to Foo as loans in 2018.
Zhou then had to borrow $20,000 to provide the subsequent loan.
"All these showed clearly that the respondent was never involved in its employees' illegal activities and neither did it give its tacit approval (nor) pretend to be ignorant of what the Singapore branch's employees were doing," said the court.
In September 2021, Foo, then 47, was sentenced to 5½ years' jail for taking about $1.24 million in bribes in the form of loans from contractors and sub-contractors.
Foo, who resigned from LTA in September 2019, was also ordered to pay a penalty of about $1.16 million, equivalent to the amount he had not returned.
Xi and Zhou were arrested in September 2019 by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau.
After being released on bail, they absconded to China, where they were arrested and subsequently convicted by a Guangzhou court.
Xi was sentenced to a five-year jail term and a fine of 300,000 yuan (S$57,400). Zhou was sentenced to two years' jail and a fine of 100,000 yuan.
China Railway Tunnel Group has 24 branches, eight of which are overseas.
The Singapore branch was a sub-contractor for two different projects on the Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL), and was awarded the main contract for a project on the Circle Line.
At the time of the offences, Foo was involved in the project management of the main contractors in respect of TEL projects.
Between 2016 and 2019, he reached out to the company's employees, including Xi, to ask for loans.
No loan was given as a result of Foo's first request.
Subsequently, Xi agreed to give him a loan upon his second request in the hope that Foo would refer more job opportunities to the company.
Zhou then arranged for false invoices to be issued to the company and prepared supporting documents with forged signatures.
These documents were presented to the company's finance department, which disbursed the payment.
After receiving the money, Xi and Zhou passed $200,000 to Foo.
In 2019, Foo made a third request.
Xi agreed to give him another loan, in the hope that Foo would expedite the company's payment claims and help the company to win the tender for another project.
On Xi's instructions, Zhou borrowed $20,000 from a friend and passed the money to Foo.
The prosecution alleged that in 2016, Mr Liu Chenyu, who was based in China, was told of the discussions to pay Foo a bribe and approved his request for a loan.
Mr Liu was then the deputy general manager of the company's overseas department, which was in charge of all the overseas branches.
The prosecution presented text messages, including one from another employee of the Singapore branch telling Foo that Mr Liu was grateful for his support.
But the High Court panel said the prosecution had not presented the necessary evidence to prove that Mr Liu was involved.
The messages did not prove that Foo's request for a loan was actually conveyed to Mr Liu, said the judges.
Lawyer Paul Loy of WongPartnership, who acts for the company, said his client will continue to respect the laws of countries in which it operates.
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