Ex-SCDF chief 'knew she would agree'
Lim faces 10 counts of corruption
Former Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) chief Peter Lim knew or had reason to believe that a woman would give in to his request for oral sex because she was interested in having further business dealings between her company and the SCDF, a court heard yesterday morning.
Lim, 52, faces 10 counts of corruption in a sex-for-contracts case. But, as decided earlier, the prosecution will proceed with one charge involving Pang Chor Mui from Nimrod Engineering first.
In his opening address, Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Kiat Pheng said Lim knew that Nimrod was an existing vendor with SCDF at the time of the sex-related incident on May 2, 2010.
Nimrod supplies products to SCDF, and also provides after-sales warranty services.
When he obtained “services” from Pang, he knew she was the general manager in Nimrod Engineering and he knew that she was aware of his position at the SCDF, the court heard.
The prosecutor said she was concerned about the existing relationship that she and her company had with Lim, and did not wish to jeopardise this relationship by upsetting him if she did not give in to his request.
The prosecution said it will also provide evidence to show that after Lim had obtained the “service”, he contacted Pang to ask about the supply of Radiation Portal Monitors to the SCDF. This was when SCDF's need for such monitors was not yet publicly known, and Nimrod also did not supply them at that time.
With this information, Nimrod proceeded to source for suppliers of these monitors, and later submitted a bid for a contract to supply them to the SCDF, the prosecutor said.
The prosecution said that under the Prevention of Corruption Act, any gratification given to or received by a civil servant, from a person who has or is seeking to have business dealings with the Government, shall be deemed to have been given and received corruptly. The burden of proof is on the civil servant to prove otherwise.
Lim’s lawyer said yesterday morning that his client categorically denies any allegations of corruption, and will disprove the “nebulous” arguments of the prosecution.
Lawyer Hamidul Haq said Lim had a “genuine friendship” with Pang and it “involved playful and teasing banter, and intimacy between them”.
He said it was a “one-off” sexual encounter and merely a physical expression of the relationship shared between the two, he said. Lim did not at anytime request for it.
The lawyer noted that Pang – who is married and mother of a teenager – has since resigned from Nimrod. He added that Lim's only wrongdoing was his “personal indiscretion” and said the state is not responsible for policing marital vows.
Pang, who is in her 40s, is expected to take the stand as a witness for the prosecution. Lim faces nine other charges of corruption, but these have been stood down and will be dealt with separately.
They involve sex with Esther Goh of IT firm NCS and Lee Wei Hoon of Singapore Radiation Centre.
Earlier the former head of Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau, Ng Boon, 46, had been acquitted of corruptly obtaining sexual favours from a woman seeking agency contracts last week.
