SINGAPORE - Three government agencies have lodged police reports over irregular quotations by companies that submitted bids for contracts, some of which had passed checks and were awarded using public funds.
In its annual report released on Wednesday (July 20), the Auditor General's Office (AGO) raised doubts about the authenticity of some of the bids received by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and the National Environment Agency (NEA) in the financial year that ended in March.
It had recommended that the agencies investigate the matter.
For instance, the AGO had suspicions about two direct contracts awarded to a contractor by SLA where there were "tell-tale signs that cast doubt on the authenticity of quotations", without elaborating in its report on how much the contracts cost. SLA has since filed a police report.
For the NEA, AGO's checks found possible irregularities in 61 of 364 approved grants between September 2018 and September 2021, awarded under an NEA scheme related to raising the efficiency of the environmental services industry through the adoption of technology.
Under the scheme, NEA would co-fund a percentage of costs for companies to buy a new digital solution or equipment.
A total of $340,000 was given to the 61 irregular applications, out of a total of $5.62 million awarded in grants during the three-year period.
The problematic bids for MHA contracts came from star rate items, which were services and items that were not listed in the contracts.
One of the issues that AGO flagged was that MHA had not adequately assessed bids for their cost, but a further examination of the bids themselves showed that a "substantial number of star rate items" were improper in the first place.
AGO said 531 of 752 star rate items totalling $3.14 million, or about 34 per cent of the total value of such items checked, were problematic, although it did not elaborate on whether contracts were awarded to these.
"As a result, there was inadequate assurance that value for money had been obtained for the star rate items," the report said.
All three agencies have since told the AGO that they will better equip their officers with skills to detect tell-tale signs of questionable applications and work on making their processes more rigorous.
An MHA spokesman said the ministry takes a serious view of the possible irregularities in quotations, and lodged police reports immediately after the AGO surfaced the issue. Based on investigations so far, MHA staff are not involved in the irregularities, she added.
Last year, AGO also found possible irregularities in the records of three government ministries and two statutory boards, which subsequently led to police reports.
These were the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, Ministry of Education, MHA, the Housing Board and People's Association.
