Two ex-directors of a company were charged in court on Thursday with corruptly bribing a manager with technology giant Apple to gain an unfair advantage when bidding for business contracts.

Chua Kim Guan also known as Jacky, 47, was managing director of Jin Li Mould Manufacturing, and Andrew Ang Kok Kiat, 38, was its sales director at the time of the alleged offences.

Chua faces 14 counts of corruptly giving a total of US$387,600 to Paul Shin Devine, then Apple's global supply manager, as a reward to advance the business interest of Jin Li Mould with Apple.

The payments were made in Singapore, Macau, the United States and China between 2006 and 2009.

Chua, who founded Jin Li Mould, is now unemployed. He indicated through his lawyer Wee Pan Lee that he intends to plead guilty. The case will be mentioned again on Oct 3.

Ang, now a taxi driver, is accused of abetting Chua to give between US$10,000 and US$30,000 to Devine on 12 occasions. He faces two other similar charges of abetting the shareholders of Fastening Technology to give US$9,000 to Devine, and an associate of Lateral Solutions to give US$16,000 to Devine to advance the business interest of the two companiees with Apple.

Nine other charges accuse him of receiving bribes. He allegedly received US$65,100 in total from Devine; $180,000 from Fastening Technology's three shareholders; and US$4,000 from Lateral Solutions' associate.

Ang's lawyer, Mr Selva K. Naidu, applied for the case to be adjourned to Oct 17. Ang's $250,000 police bail has been until then.

Devine had pleaded guilty in the United States to wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

The maximum punishment for corruption is a $100,000 fine and five years' jail on each charge.