Muthukumaran Ramaiyan v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: See Kee Oon JC
• Judgment Date: 13 February 2015
• Neutral Citation: [2015] SGHC 230
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Magistrate’s Appeal No 86 of 2014
• Published date: 04 November 2015
• Year: 2015
• Hearing Date: 23 January 2015,13 February 2015
• Defendant Counsel: K Sathinathan and Mr Anil N Balchandani (T J Cheng Law Corporation),David Chew and Nicholas Seng (Attorney-General's Chambers)
• Subject Matter: Criminal Law,Offences,Property,Criminal breach of trust
• Citation: [2015] SGHC 230

See Kee Oon JC [delivering the oral judgment]:

I reserved judgment after hearing the appeal on 23 January 2015 to fully consider the written reply submissions from counsel that were tendered only on the day of the hearing. I have reviewed the evidence and considered the submissions.

I am not persuaded that there is any merit in the appeal against conviction. In particular, I do not agree that the accused can rely on his assertion of a bona fide belief in his entitlement to directors’ fees as a defence. It is clear from the evidence that there could have been no mistaken assumption, let alone any honest belief on his part that he was allowed to help himself to the fee payments. He knew that approval was necessary before he could legitimately obtain payment. Nevertheless he went ahead and helped himself to the money disregarding the fact that no approval or authorisation had been obtained. He continued to do so even after being expressly told that the fee payments would not be approved.

I should add that having a belief that he ought to be paid such fees is a belief as to entitlement to ask for payment at best; he may even have believed in his entitlement to be paid. But these are plainly not the same as having an honest and genuine belief that he was actually entitled to payment of the money without having obtained authorisation for such payments to be made.

The District Judge concluded that he may have an ‘underlying sense that he was entitled to remuneration as a director’ (at [87] of his Grounds of Decision reported as Public Prosecutor v Muthukumaran Ramaiyan [2014] SGDC 330). But whatever his ‘underlying sense’ might have been of his entitlement, the evidence clearly shows that he could not have acted bona fide, having regard to s 52 of the Penal Code, which specifies that acts are not done in good faith if done without due care and attention. The same applies to beliefs purportedly held in good faith. The proper characterisation would be that his acts were not merely indicative of extreme presumptuousness. I have no doubt that he was dishonest.

With this in mind, I turn to the prosecution’s appeal in relation to the District Judge’s order to convict the accused on an amended charge reflecting a lower sum of $8,000. With respect, I am of the view that the District Judge had erred in this regard. The logical and indeed the only inference had to be that the accused knew that he was not lawfully entitled to such payments...