SINGAPORE — Several important questions of public interest have arisen out of the High Court’s findings on the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) case, with large amounts of public funds involved, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said. He also urged Parliament to hold the Workers’ Party (WP) and two of its top leaders accountable for their roles in the saga.

Tracing the long-running AHTC saga to its origins and how the WP had acted throughout, Mr Heng on Tuesday (Nov 5) slammed the opposition party for how it “persistently refused over eight years to be transparent about what it had done”.

But the time of reckoning has come, he added. 

Mr Heng, who is expected to succeed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong when he steps down, said: “The High Court has found Ms Sylvia Lim and Mr Low Thia Khiang (from WP) to be dishonest and deceptive, and to have failed in their duty to the town council… Are Ms Sylvia Lim and Mr Low Thia Khiang going to continue to have oversight, and decision-making power, over public funds in AHTC? What do those in charge of AHTC intend to do about the findings in the judgement?”

Last month, the High Court ruled that Ms Lim, Mr Low and Mr Pritam Singh are liable for damages suffered by the AHTC and the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council (PRPTC). In particular, the judge found that Ms Lim and Mr Low had breached their fiduciary duties to the AHTC, “as they had failed to act in AHTC’s best interests and had acted for extraneous purposes”.

All three MPs of Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (GRC) could now owe part of the S$33.7 million in claims by AHTC and PRPTC. This will be determined in a “future second stage of the trial” where the court will assess the compensation amount that the town councils are entitled to from the defendants. Ms Lim said in Parliament on Tuesday that they will file an appeal. 

A notice in the Government Gazette stated that Ms Lim has been AHTC’s vice-chairman for two years since October, while Mr Low is an elected member of the town council.

On Tuesday, Mr Heng was speaking at the start of a motion which he tabled in Parliament, calling on Ms Lim and Mr Low to “recuse themselves” from all financial matters related to the town council.

Stating that Ms Lim and Mr Low had misled everyone — their own town councillors, auditors, Parliament and the public — in their handling of the saga, Mr Heng said it was “lamentable” that throughout the entire period, WP has “consistently and repeatedly refused to take responsibility for the problems in its town council”.

Speaking to a packed House, Mr Heng said it pained him to file the motion against Mr Low, someone for whom he “always had a high regard”. “But there are important questions of public interest to consider. Millions of dollars in public funds are involved.” 

The crux of the issue surrounds how both had sought to allow “their friends” to manage the Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council, namely the late Danny Loh and his wife How Weng Fan, who ran AHTC’s former managing agent and emergency maintenance service provider FM Solutions and Services (FMSS).

The MPs did so by not holding a public tender for their services and instead appointed FMSS directly, the court found. The WP MPs had previously argued that this was done “in good faith”.

But Mr Heng said that WP waived the tender through telling untruths and manipulating circumstances so that FMSS “would be appointed whatever the case”, noting that it also allowed FMSS to overcharge for their services.

“This overcharging, abuse of public funds, was inexcusable,” he said, adding that the WP MPs have sacrificed their residents' interests to favour their friends.

“The residents have suffered. Under the management of the Workers’ Party’s friends, the town council ran up deficits. A surplus of S$3.3 million under the previous management became a deficit of S$2 million by the third year of the new regime. Meanwhile, their friends made big profits running into millions of dollars,” Mr Heng added.

“Allowing your friends to help themselves to public funds — that is a tale that belongs to the Third World, not Singapore.”

‘A TALE OF DECEPTION’

Despite several court judgements, Mr Heng noted that the WP town councilors have “persistently resisted disclosure, offered countless excuses and made a litany of misleading statements”.

This was all an effort to “cover up their wrongdoing”, he said.

“It is a tale of deception, spun out over eight years, which finally unravelled in court — and not just in one court. It unravelled in three different courts, including the Court of Appeal.”

Mr Heng said WP have taken the position that as elected MPs, they are not answerable to the courts for “any serious mismanagement or misspending of public funds”. This submission, which “sought to place the WP MPs above the law”, was rejected by the High Court and the Court of Appeal, he added.

“(The WP MPs) are saying that no matter what wrongs they commit, and no matter how much public funds are misused, they are not answerable and nothing can be done to them in court.”

Mr Heng noted how, in February 2015, after the Auditor-General’s Office (AGO) had pointed out lapses in AHTC, WP had sought to “obfuscate, throw doubt on AGO, pretend that everything was fine”. WP did not do anything to resolve the problems.

“I do not know what they were expecting. Perhaps they felt that somehow, the public would forget and give them a free pass since they were an opposition party. They were not used to running a GRC, so the public would ‘give chance’? Indeed, shortcomings resulting from inexperience can be forgiven.

“But dishonesty, deliberate and repeated deception, to profit one’s friends, cannot be forgiven or swept under the carpet,” he said.

It would have been a different outcome today if WP had done otherwise, he added.

The inaction of WP led to further court action taken by the Government, and the courts — from as early as 2015 — found lapses in internal controls and inadequate oversight over transactions where key officials acted despite conflicts of interest. The courts also found that the WP MPs had not sought to recover the damages, Mr Heng said.

Later, independent accountants appointed by both WP and the People’s Action Party-led PRPTC found breaches as well.

Directed by the court, WP MPs picked the members of an independent panel to look into these flaws, but that same panel decided to sue Mr Low, Ms Lim and Mr Singh for the losses.

Mr Heng emphasised: “It was not the MND (Ministry of National Development) or the HDB (Housing and Development Board) that sued Mr Low Thia Khiang, Ms Sylvia Lim and Mr Pritam Singh.”

The court found that there was no intention to call for a public tender in the first place.

It also judged that Mr Low and Ms Lim were fully aware that their conduct regarding the waiver of the tender was of “questionable legality”. He noted that the High Court also commented about WP’s cover-up, that there was a “deliberate and calculated” plan to “cloak” and “camouflage” their wrongdoing.

WP’S INTEGRITY QUESTIONED 

Mr Heng reiterated that there were “numerous points over the last eight years” when the WP MPs could have acted.

“But, at every step of the way, there was obfuscation instead of transparency; resistance instead of cooperation; denial instead of honesty.”

He then distributed a list of misleading statements issued by the WP over the whole AHTC saga, showing how Mr Low and Ms Lim had effectively misled their own WP town councillors (by concealing the motive of the direct appointment of FMSS); auditors (Ms Lim had asked FMSS to sanitise the report on its appointment as managing agent so it could “pass the auditors’ eyes”); the public (by falsely asserting that there was no time to call a tender); and Parliament.

In one case, he noted how Ms Lim had admitted in court to have lied in a press release, which was disseminated to all Singaporeans including the residents of AHTC, over extra managing agent fees paid for the appointment of FMSS.

“Why were there so many false and misleading statements? When one reads the record — the AGO report, the (auditors') reports, three court judgements — you will find misleading statements made by the Workers’ Party MPs piling up,” he said.

He then stressed how Mr Low and Ms Lim had also allowed Mr Singh, who was deemed by the courts to have breached a lower standard of duty than the duo, to mislead Parliament in 2015.

Mr Singh had said then that AHTC had kept FMSS at arm’s length. But the courts later judged differently, Mr Heng said.

He added: “Ms Sylvia Lim and Mr Low Thia Khiang knew very well they had not kept (How Weng Fan, director of FMSS) at arm’s length. Yet, they let Mr Pritam Singh mislead this House, without correcting him.

Other WP MPs, including Ms Lim and Hougang MP Png Eng Huat, had also misled Parliament that their safeguards for transactions with their friends were adequate.

“When the Workers’ Party leaders let their own MPs mislead Parliament on their behalf, what does this say about the Workers’ Party’s integrity and values?” Mr Heng asked.