Man fined for forgery involving Woodlands Wellington Football Club’s auditors report
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Lau Chee Yoong committed the offence as he felt pressured by Woodlands Wellington FC's then finance executive.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
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SINGAPORE - An employee of an accounting and auditing services firm forged his then boss’ signature on an independent auditors report for Woodlands Wellington Football Club (WWFC).
Lau Chee Yoong, 34, who was an audit assistant at Chan Leng Leng & Co at the time, committed the offence as he felt pressured by WWFC’s then finance executive.
The Malaysian was fined $20,000 on Friday after he pleaded guilty to a forgery charge.
He no longer works at Chan Leng Leng & Co and is now employed at another firm.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Thiagesh Sukumaran said WWFC and Hougang United Football Club (HUFC) were clients of Chan Leng Leng & Co at the time.
Some time before March 2016, Lau’s then boss, Ms Chan Leng Leng, assigned him to conduct an audit on WWFC with respect to the 2015 financial year.
Lau then audited the football club’s accounts on it premises between March 1 and 9 that year.
Around May 2016, the club’s finance executive started pressuring Lau to complete the audit.
This was because WWFC was required to submit its financial statements to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) by the end of that month.
As part of his job, Lau was supposed to hand over documents such as financial statements relating to the audit to Ms Chan for her inspection and signature before submitting them to WWFC.
Ms Chan had to review Lau’s work and sign an opinion in her capacity as a chartered accountant and the independent auditor of WWFC.
The court heard that her opinion had to state that the accounting and other records maintained by WWFC were properly kept in accordance with the applicable regulations.
The DPP said: “However, (Lau) was unable to submit the financial statements and working papers to (Ms Chan) for her review, because he had been assigned other audits by (her) and was rushing to complete them.”
Feeling pressured by the football club’s finance executive, Lau decided to forge Ms Chan’s signature on the financial statements.
He then stamped a date on the report and sent it with some financial statement to WWFC which did not detect the forgery.
The club then submitted the documents to agencies including Iras and the Football Association of Singapore.
On April 19, 2017, Sport Singapore lodged a police report over allegations that there had been irregularities
The Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) began looking into the matter.
As part of its investigations, CAD also investigated HUFC and WWFC. Lau’s offence came to light soon after when Ms Chan told investigators that she did not sign the affected documents.
On Friday, defence lawyer Gideon Yap asked for Lau to be given a fine of $10,000.
The lawyer from Martin & Partners said: “It must be noted that there was no financial harm caused by the forgeries, and it does not appear that any reputational harm has been suffered either.”
Mr Yap also said that his client is committed to not making such a mistake again.
