SINGAPORE -Alleged match-fixing kingpin Dan Tan Seet Eng's former wife Guan Enmei called his accomplice, Eric Ding, to ask for advice about two laptops in her possession, after Tan was told to report to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB).
When she was asked to report to the CPIB herself, she passed the laptops to a limousine driver for safekeeping and, when graft investigators found the computers, she insisted that she did not know anything about them.
Testifying on the first day of Guan's two-day trial on Monday (May16), for giving false information to a CPIB senior special investigator , Ding, who was brought to court from prison, said Guan called him some time in 2013, after her husband was being investigated for graft.
Asked by the prosecution why Guan, 41, had called him, Ding said it was probably because he shared the same network of encrypted phones and laptops with Tan to communicate with each other.
Guan faces a single charge of knowingly giving false information to the senior special investigator of the CPIB office in Lengkok Bahru on June 6, 2013.
She allegedly said she had left her house with a handbag and denied taking with her a paper bag containing two laptops which, according to the charge, she knew to be false.
Ding is serving a six-year jail term for, among other offences, bribing three Lebanese football officials with prostitutes for fixing future matches.
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.
The prosecution's case is that on June 6 morning, Tan was asked to report to the CPIB's office. Before he left home, he told Guan to take two laptops from the study, place them in a bag and hand him the bag after he was released.
That afternoon, Guan was herself told to report to the CPIB and she told limousine driver Alan Chen De Zhan to pick her up from her home, but he was unable to do so.
Mr Chen then arranged for another driver, Mr Akbar Abdul Ali, to pick her up.
When Mr Akbar got to her home, Guan placed a white Dior paper bag in the back seat of the car before sitting in the front passenger seat of his car.
She passed the bag containing the laptops to Mr Chen at the CPIB carpark and asked him to safekeep it for her until she came out of the building.
He then went to wait for her at a coffeeshop nearby, but graft investigators seized the bag and laptops from him there.
During her interview by a CPIB senior special investigator, Guan repeatedly maintained that she did not know anything about the laptops, and persisted in saying that she did not know anything about the white paper bag containing two laptops.
The trial continues with Mr Chen on the stand on Monday afternoon. Mr Akbar and two other CPIB officers are expected to testify thereafter.
If found guilty of knowingly giving false information to a graft investigator, under the Prevention of Corruption Act, Guan faces a maximum punishment of a $10,000 fine and one year in jail.
