Lee Chen Seong Jeremy and others v Public Prosecutor
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Judge | See Kee Oon J |
Judgment Date | 01 March 2019 |
Neutral Citation | [2019] SGHC 48 |
Court | High Court (Singapore) |
Docket Number | Criminal Revision No 9 of 2018 |
Published date | 03 May 2019 |
Year | 2019 |
Hearing Date | 06 December 2018,21 November 2018 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Adrian Wong and Ang Leong Hao (Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP) |
Defendant Counsel | Peter Koy, Sng Yi Zhi Eugene and Ben Mathias Tan (Attorney-General's Chambers) |
Citation | [2019] SGHC 48 |
Where a person or persons are suspected of having committed an offence, it is commonplace for the police or the relevant law enforcement agencies to seize property belonging to them for the purposes of assisting with those investigations. The law enforcement agency does not, however, have the right to hold on to the property indefinitely. Instead, s 370(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed) (“CPC”) regulates the procedure to be taken by a law enforcement agency in reporting the seizure of the property to a Magistrate. The relevant officer must either make a report to the Magistrate once he considers that the property is not relevant for the purposes of any investigation, pursuant to s 370(1)(
In this case, the property in question was considered to be relevant to ongoing investigations which were not complete even after the one-year deadline stipulated under s 370(1)(
The petitioners argued that the Magistrate erred in admitting the additional material, and also in indicating that she was prepared to hear the prosecution
This criminal revision raised novel questions of law relating to the reporting procedure for seized property under s 370(1)(
I allowed the criminal revision, and ordered that the seized property be released to the petitioners, being the persons entitled to their possession. I indicated at the time of giving my oral decision that full grounds would be furnished in due course. These grounds are set out below.
FactsThe petitioners are three individuals who were involved in the management of certain companies, in particular, companies in the “Sourcelink” and “Canaan” groups of companies.
The property in question, chiefly comprising company files and various electronic devices, was seized by the police on 6 June 20171 pursuant to investigations commenced by the Commercial Affairs Department of the Singapore Police Force (“CAD”) into offences committed under the Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed) and the Companies Act (Cap 50, 2006 Rev Ed).2 Although there were three petitioners involved in this case, the investigations were substantively directed at only the first petitioner, Mr Lee Chen Seong Jeremy (“Mr Lee”).3
On 5 April 2018, the CAD wrote to Mr Lee, asking for his consent to CAD’s continued seizure and retention of the seized property.4 Mr Lee responded through his solicitors, M/s Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP, who wrote on behalf of all the petitioners on 12 April 2018 and 17 April 2018 to inform the CAD that the petitioners did not give consent.5
On 6 June 2018, the CAD filed the s 370 Report pursuant to s 370(1)(
The CAD amended the s 370 Report on 2 July 2018 (“the amended s 370 Report”). The amendments were mostly of a clerical nature,8 and involved the correction of some typographical errors in the s 370 Report, the removal of five items wrongly included in the tables of items seized, and the inclusion of five items the s 370 Report failed initially to describe.
The reporting of the seizure under s 370 CPC was heard
The Magistrate indicated at the hearing on 19 July 2018 that she had “difficulty” determining the relevance of the seized property to the investigations on the material before her,
Before the adjourned hearing, the prosecution decided of its own accord to file an addendum to the amended s 370 Report (“the Addendum”) on 15 August 2018.15 This Addendum was made available to the petitioners. The Addendum furnished yet more information concerning the CAD investigations. In particular, paragraph 3 of the Addendum gave more details of the offences Mr Lee was being investigated for, while paragraph 4 specified that the items were seized because “they are believed to constitute evidence of the above offences and therefore relevant to [CAD’s] investigations”. The original annex to the amended s 370 Report was also updated to “show the relevance of each item to the offence that is being investigated”; a new column was inserted to the right of the tables attributing the items seized to offences committed under the Penal Code, Business Names Registration Act 2014 (No 29 of 2014) or the Companies Act.
At the adjourned hearing on 17 August 2018, the petitioners vigorously objected to the prosecution having filed the Addendum on its own motion. The petitioners also argued that the Magistrate was not entitled to have reference to either the Annex or the Addendum, as both had been filed outside the one-year deadline. The Magistrate decided that she could have sight of the Addendum.16 She made it explicitly clear, however, that she had not requested for information to be put in on an
The prosecution, for its part, indicated that it had placed all relevant material before the court, and was content for the matter to proceed on an
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