Most countries, even those where in reality it is extensively practiced, have legislation forbidding corruption but what is thought of as corruption may vary widely. This is partly a question of culture and partly a question of construction. This is illustrated by two stories which recently appeared in the same day in the International New York Times.² A Japanese minister resigned because she had handed out free hand-held fans to supporters.³ On the same day a senior executive of Petronas, the government owned Brazilian oil company, accepted a plea deal with prosecutors that he had turned the refining division of Petronas into a slush fund for a political party.

In Singapore the leading act is the Prevention of Corruption Act s6⁴ of which provides:

he shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $100,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or to both.

There is another offence of corruption in s5 of the PCA which provides:

Punishment for corruption

shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $100,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or to both.

The key concepts of “Principal”, “Agent” and gratification are defined in s2 which provides:




It is clear that these rules apply in both the public and private sector. The major difference is that in the public sector there is a presumption of corruption where gratification is given to or received by an employee of the government or of a public body.⁵ The scope of public bodies in Singapore law is quite wide. So in Tey Tsun Hang v Public Prosecutor.⁶ The accused was an Associate Professor of Law in the Law School of the National University of Singapore (NUS). He was charged with corruption. It was established that he had gifts from a female student of a Mont Blanc pen; two tailor-made shirts; an i-pod touch; a restaurant bill and that they had had sex on two occasions. It was decided that NUS was a public body and that therefore the burden of proving the absence of corruption was on him. The fact that NUS had a substantial degree of autonomy did not take it out of the class of public bodies. He was convicted but on appeal the judge held⁷:

It seems to me that the TJ⁸ concluded that the second and third elements of the offence had been made out because the appellant had breached NUS policies and because he had abused his position as a lecturer when he had exploited Ms Ko. While the TJ accepted that the breach itself did not necessarily amount to a corrupt intention, he was of the view that the breach and the exploitation did. Hence the TJ’s conclusion that the appellant’s conduct was depraved, corrupt and dishonest. I am of the view that the TJ had wrongly equated conduct which is morally reprehensible with conduct which is legally wrong. I agree that the appellant had exploited Ms Ko. His conduct was morally wrong but that is not corruption for the purposes of the Act. Exploitation does not necessarily amount to corruption under the Act. The gap is not filled in by the appellant’s breach of NUS policies. True, the failure to disclose the relationship and the gifts demonstrated that he did not want others to know about them but, in the circumstances, the failure is not clear evidence of a corrupt intent. As he was exploiting her, it is no surprise that he did not want to disclose his relationship with her.

A very recent decision of the Singapore Court of Appeal⁹ is instructive. In Public Prosecutor v Teo Chu Ha ¹⁰ the accused was a senior director of logistics in company A. She was accused of corruptly assisting company B successfully to tender for contracts with company A. The alleged gratification was that she had been allowed to buy shares in company B. Her counsel persuaded the trial judge that this would only be an improper gratification if it were proved that she had bought the shares at an undervalue. The Court of Appeal held that this was clearly wrong. The opportunity to buy the shares in company B was itself a form of gratification since the company was a private company whose shares could not be bought on the market. Further the shares unlocked the door to further gratification as the defendant was paid substantial sums by way of dividends on the shares and company B’s profits flowed significantly from business with company A.

It will be seen that normally both the giver of the gratification and the receiver are guilty of an offence. In a sentencing appeal in Public Prospector v Marzuki Bin Ahmad ¹¹ Sundaresh Menon CJ said that in sentencing the starting point would usually be that the giver and receiver were equally at fault. He observed¹²:

In my judgment, the effect of these remarks, taken together, is that the principle of parity of sentencing as between the giver and the recipient of gratification cannot be viewed or applied as an inflexible and rigid rule. Although the general principle is that the giver and the recipient of gratification are equally culpable, many other factors must also be considered when deciding on the sentence to be imposed on the particular accused person who is before the court. These factors may relate to the degree of culpability of each individual offender in committing the corrupt acts, as well as circumstances unique to each offender (bearing in mind too the general approach to sentencing for s 6(a) offences set out earlier at [28] above). Leaving that aside, in the case of a party to a corrupt transaction who is sentenced after his counterparty in the same transaction has been separately sentenced, it could also be that the sentence imposed on the counterparty in the earlier decision might have been too high or too low by reference to the applicable sentencing precedents. The court must always have the flexibility, when sentencing a party to a corrupt transaction, to depart from the earlier sentence imposed on his counterparty in the same transaction where that is the appropriate course of action to take.

The enforcement of the criminal law on corruption is principally in the hands of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), which takes an active role. The Singapore Government attaches great importance to this area. In the Corruption Perception Index produced by Transparency International, Singapore was ranked fifth in both 2011 and 2012.¹³

Corruption is not only a crime but its presence will have effects in the civil law. So the bribe receiver cannot sue the bribe giver if he does not pay up and the bribe giver cannot get his money back if the bribe receiver does not deliver. Further transactions procured by bribes may not be binding even though some of the parties do not know of the bribes. Here the position of agents is of critical importance.

In the simplest cases the bribe giver and bribe receiver will be the only parties but this will often not be the case. One or other or both will be acting on behalf of a public body or a company, which can only act through human beings. This will make some rules of agency law highly relevant.