A cleaning supervisor was sentenced to nine weeks' jail on Wednesday for offering his nephew money and a job for taking the rap on his behalf for a driving offence.

Mohd Yusof Mohd Ali, 58, was driving a car along Jurong West Street 75 without a licence on Nov 8, 2009 when he was involved in an accident. He pleaded guilty to the driving offence as well as to offering $1,000 and a job to his nephew in return for his nephew lying to the police that he was the driver of the car at the time.

This was the fifth time that Yusof had driven without a valid licence. District Judge Marvin Bay imposed the jail term and banned him from driving for five years.

The court heard that he settled the traffic accident by paying off the other party $300 when their vehicles were involved in the accident at the junction of Jurong West Street 75 and Jurong West Street 73. Later that month, he told his nephew, Muhammad Norzaid Muhammad Yazid Johari, then 24, about the accident, and that he had been driving without a Class 3 licence. He asked Norzaid to lie that the latter was driving the car at the time him to shield him from criminal liability. He promised to pay him $1,000 and offered him help to get a job, if everything went well.

Both men went to the Traffic Police and gave false statements.

The offences came to light in 2010 after Norzaid spoke to his cousin, a Special Constable with the Police Coast Guard, who told him to tell the truth. Norzaid was fined $4,000 earlier this year for giving a false statement to the police.

Yusof, whose sentence was deferred until Nov 15, could have been jailed for up to seven years and/or fined for perverting the course of justice.