A establisher minister in Singapore has been jailed for a year for receiving more than £230,000 worth of gifts, including tickets to Premier League alignes and West End musicals.
S Iswaran, who was a member of Singapore’s cabinet for 13 years in which he held the trade, communications and carry portfolios, pdirected culpable last week to four counts of improperly receiving gifts and one of obstructing fairice.
Other costly gifts the 62-year-anciaccess adchooseed from businessmen comprised a trip on a personal jet, a luxury Brompton bike and tickets to the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix.
His sentence was more disjoine than the six to seven months sought by the prosecution, which Judge Vincent Hoong shelp was “manifestly inenough” given the gravity of Iswaran’s offences and their impact on unveil suppose.
“Trust and confidence in unveil institutions were the bedrock of effective ruleance, which could all too easily be undermined by the materializeance that an individual unveil servant had descfinishen below the standards of integrity and accountability,” he shelp when sentencing Iswaran.
Iswaran was initipartner indictd with 35 counts, but prosecutors progressed with only five, while reducing two counts of fraudulence to receiving illterrible gifts.
The establisher minister initipartner pdirected not culpable to the indicts. He has been apshowed out on bail before his jail term commences on Monday.
The case has shocked Singapore, which is one of the world’s least corrupt countries, according to Transparency International’s fraudulence perception index.
Read more:
Diego Maradona’s remains to be shiftd
UK to hand over Chagos Islands
Couple create dead hugging each other in bed after hurricane
The last fraudulence case involving a Singaporean minister was in 1986, when the country’s national enhugement minister was spendigated for alleged payoff. He died before any indicts were filed.
The last minister indictd with graft was Wee Toon Boon, who was create culpable in 1975 and jailed for adchooseing gifts in exalter for helping a business person.
Iswaran’s trial comes fair four months after Singapore inshighed a recent prime minister Lawrence Wong. The country’s establisher premier Lee Hsien Loong stepped down after 20 years.
