44-year-old Ngow Chun Siong, who worked for a fish wholesaler Fish Vision Agro-tech, conspired with his (then) boss, 47-year-old Chew Kim Hwee, to bribe a senior team leader of NTUC FairPrice, 48-year-old Lim Kian Kok, paying him about $25,000 in bribes to buy more fish from their company, according to The Straits Times.
Ngow’s job scope included transporting fish for the company, while Chew was the director and majority shareholder for the firm.
They had bribed Lim on at least 8 occasions in 2020 to get him to buy more fish from their firm.
In a separate offence, Ngow was also caught for drink-driving back in April 2022.
Ngow pleaded guilty to one count of drink driving and one count of graft on 13 February and was sentenced to 7 months imprisonment and fined $4,000, as well as being banned from holding or obtaining all classes of driving licenses for 2.5 years.
Lim and Chew’s cases are currently still pending, and Lim is no longer working for NTUC FairPrice.
Background
Fish Vision Agro-tech ran a stall at Jurong Fishery Port and Lim was tasked by NTUC to oversee their buying operations there from 1 July 2013 to October 2020.
Lim was given the discretion to choose how much and which seafood supplier to buy from.
Sometime in February 2020, Ngow asked Lim if he could buy more fish from Fish Vision, and Lim then asked him what would he get if he did.
Ngow then told Chew about what Lim said, and Chew then agreed to pay Lim 20 cents for each KG of fish that he bought from them, which Lim then accepted.
From February 2020 to September 2020, Ngow handed Lim nearly $25,000 in total on several occasions.
After receiving each payment, Lim would give half of the money to Ngow, which was about $12,500.
Before the corrupted deal, Lim usually bought about 200kg of fish from Fish Vision for NTUC, but after the corrupted deal, the amount purchased increased to about 400kg to 600kg a day.
In a separate, unrelated case relating to Ngow’s drink driving, he had drunk alcohol before driving a car along Tampines Avenue 10 on 25 April 2022 at about 1.30am.
He was stopped by Traffic Police officers who performed checks on him and he was found with 62 micrograms of alcohol in every 100 millilitres of breath – the legal limit is 35 micrograms in 100 millilitres of breath.