The third wife of alleged match- fixing kingpin Dan Tan Seet Eng was yesterday given two months' jail for lying to an anti-graft investigator about two of his laptops, which she was trying to hide from the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB).
But the prosecution, which had asked for four to six months' jail, applied for Guan Enmei's sentence to be deferred, pending an appeal for a stiffer prison term. District Judge Lee Poh Choo set bail at $20,000.
In her sentencing remarks, the judge said that lying to a law enforcement officer cannot be treated lightly - more so in this case, where Guan knew the enormity of the international match-fixing saga.
In an interview at the bureau's office on June 6, 2013, Guan lied that she had left home with only a handbag, and had not taken along a paper bag with the laptops.
After a two-day trial last month, Judge Lee found the 41-year-old guilty last week. The judge said Guan knew the laptops contained incriminating evidence.
The court had heard that Tan was asked to report to the CPIB office on June 6, 2013. Before he left home, he told Guan to take two laptops, place them in a bag and hand it back to him after he was released.
That afternoon, Guan was herself told to report to the bureau.
As her usual driver was unable to pick her up from home, he arranged for another driver to do so. When the driver arrived, Guan put a white Dior paper bag in the back seat before getting into the front passenger seat. She phoned Tan's alleged accomplice, Eric Ding Si Yang, for advice about the two laptops while on the way to the bureau.
On arriving at the CPIB carpark, Guan met her usual driver and asked him to hold on to the bag for her until she came out of the building. He then waited with it at a nearby coffee shop, where it was later seized by graft investigators.
When questioned about the bag and laptops by a CPIB investigator, Guan insisted she did not know anything about them.
The maximum penalty for giving false or misleading information to a CPIB investigator is a $10,000 fine and one year's jail.
Tan, described by Interpol as "the leader of the world's most notorious match-fixing syndicate", is being detained without trial under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act for the second time. Now 52, he was first arrested on Sept 16, 2013.
Guan was Tan's third wife. She divorced him in July last year.
