On 5 February 2018, Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam
said in Parliament that the CHC sentences are too low, and “will move to ensure legislation provides for higher penalties for senior officers who commit criminal breaches of trust (CBT)”.
This comes after the apex court
ruled that the six CHC leaders should not be convicted for aggravated CBT and would not have to spend additional time behind bars.
The shorter sentence was due to a new interpretation of the Penal Code section governing CBT offences, which led to the Court of Appeal ruling that company directors, governing board members or key officers of charities and officers of societies who commit CBT could be jailed up to seven years. This is in comparison to employees being liable for a maximum 15 years imprisonment.
Said Mr Shanmugam on the Government’s position on the verdict: “The Government’s policy is clear: If you are a senior officer, director in the organisation, you are in a position of greater trust. You have considerable authority to make decisions in relation to the organisation’s assets. If you abuse that trust, you should be more culpable, and you should be liable for more severe punishments, compared with an ordinary employee.”
Mr Tong responded by saying that “there’s a flaw in the law because the law was not changed from many years ago”, but he “focused on what the legal provisions were”.
He added that he and his colleagues “saw the gap and argued it early on”, pointing out that “the provision the prosecution sought to use was inappropriate that in fact, the right provision should have been the one several notches lower and that would necessarily mean that even if there was a conviction, the penalty could not exceed a certain level”.