Jail for company director who gave over $24k in bribes to ex-SMRT employee
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Follow topic:
SINGAPORE - A company director bribed an SMRT employee in exchange for confidential quotation information.
On 37 occasions over five years, Yong Ming Jun gave a total of $24,450 to Soh Choon Heng, who was an assistant buyer with SMRT at the time.
Yong, the 41-year-old director of Euro Bremse (EB), which supplies parts and accessories for motor vehicles, was sentenced on Tuesday to eight months and four weeks’ jail.
He had pleaded guilty to two corruption charges, with three other similar charges taken into consideration for sentencing.
Soh is no longer an SMRT employee. In January 2023, the then 45-year-old was sentenced to 21 months’ jail
Deputy Public Prosecutor Louis Ngia said Yong knew Soh through the course of their work.
SMRT was one of EB’s biggest customers, buying parts from EB for the maintenance of its buses, including parts relating to the buses’ engines and brakes.
As an assistant buyer, Soh was responsible for supporting SMRT’s procurement and sourcing activities. These included the procurement of parts for its trains, buses and taxis.
When SMRT requires procurement of items below $200,000, it calls for a request for quotation (RFQ) via closed invites.
After that, assistant buyers initiate what is referred to as a sourcing event within the transport provider’s procurement system called Ariba. Quotations from relevant vendors are submitted to Ariba by a stipulated date.
In early 2016, Soh told Yong that EB had not been not awarded purchase orders as the prices it quoted were not competitive.
DPP Ngia said: “Soh then offered to ‘help’ EB get jobs with SMRT, if the accused should ‘help’ him. They both understood this to mean that the accused should provide Soh with corrupt monetary gratifications.”
About once or twice a month on average between 2016 and 2020, Soh supplied Yong with confidential information on EB’s competitors’ quotations for past and ongoing RFQs.
No party was supposed to view confidential information related to ongoing RFQs on Ariba. Soh would only be able to view the price lists submitted after the sourcing event.
To circumvent this process, the assistant buyer requested that vendors submit their price list through Ariba’s message board or to another section in the system. This enabled him to view the submitted prices during the sourcing event.
Soh gave Yong the confidential information via phone calls and e-mails. After accessing these e-mails, Yong would delete them immediately.
“At all times, the accused knew that EB could use the confidential information to guide its RFQ bids, giving it an unfair advantage. He also knew that it was against SMRT’s regulations for Soh to provide him such information,” said DPP Ngia.
Yong gave Soh bribes based on the quantum of the purchase orders EB received from SMRT in a month.
The DPP said the case could have raised public concern about whether there is an undiscovered culture of corruption within SMRT, and about the quality and safety of parts purchased under compromised processes.
Soh, who had worked for SMRT from 2011 to 2020, had also accepted bribes from two other company directors.
The total amount of bribes Soh received from the three directors was $54,850. He has since voluntarily surrendered $30,000 to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau.
He was terminated from the company on April 27, 2020, following an internal audit.
