CPIB officer facing fraud charges released on $500,000 court bail

Edwin Yeo Seow Hiong (above), who is facing a string of fraud charges in court, has been released on bail after he managed to raise the $500,000 bail bond set by the court earlier. -- ST PHOTO: LIM SIN THAI
Edwin Yeo Seow Hiong (above), who is facing a string of fraud charges in court, has been released on bail after he managed to raise the $500,000 bail bond set by the court earlier. -- ST PHOTO: LIM SIN THAI

Edwin Yeo Seow Hiong, who is facing a string of fraud charges in court, has been released on bail after he managed to raise the $500,000 bail bond set by the court earlier.

The case against the assistant director from the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) will be heard again on Aug 21.

Yeo, who was the head of field research and technical support at CPIB when the offences were committed, was charged in court on Wednesday morning for misappropriating at least $1.7 million from the anti-graft agency,

He faces 21 charges in total; eight for criminal breach of trust as a public servant, one count of forging a receipt for a $370,755 payment by the bureau and 12 counts of using the proceeds of his crimes for gambling at the casino in Marina Bay Sands.

The 39-year-old told the court he does not intend to engage a defence lawyer but had asked if he could have some time to deal with "family problems" and to prepare his mitigation plea. The charges, he added, were served on him by the police Commercial Affairs Department only on Tuesday.

The CPIB said in a statement released shortly after the court proceedings, that the bureau first discovered the case on Sept 14 last year. Yeo, a 15-year-veteran of the bureau, was subsequently suspended from duty and interdicted the next day after preliminary investigations.

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