PP v Li Weiming

JurisdictionSingapore
Judgment Date23 January 2014
Date23 January 2014
Docket NumberCriminal Reference No 1 of 2013
CourtCourt of Appeal (Singapore)
Public Prosecutor
Plaintiff
and
Li Weiming and others
Defendant

[2014] SGCA 7

Andrew Phang Boon Leong JA

,

V K Rajah JA

and

Lee Seiu Kin J

Criminal Reference No 1 of 2013

Court of Appeal

Criminal Law—Offences—Falsification of accounts—Meaning of phrase ‘intent to defraud’—Significance of explanation to section stating that it ‘shall be sufficient in any charge ... to allege a general intent to defraud’—Whether intent to defraud referred to general or specific intent to defraud—Whether details of person allegedly defrauded had to be included in summary of facts—Section 477A Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed)

Criminal Procedure and Sentencing—Disclosure—Criminal case disclosure conference—Consequences for non-compliance with requirements of Div 2 of Pt IX of Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed) (‘CPC 2010’) —Whether consequences for non-compliance in s 169 CPC 2010 were exhaustive—Section 169 Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed)

Criminal Procedure and Sentencing—Disclosure—Criminal case disclosure conference—Provision of summary of facts in Case for the Prosecution—Required contents of summary of facts—Section 162 (b) Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed)

Criminal Procedure and Sentencing—Revision of proceedings—Revision of orders made at criminal case disclosure conference under s 404 Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed) —Whether threshold for intervention was same as threshold that applied to exercise of court's general revisionary jurisdiction—Section 404 Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed)

The respondents were charged with one charge of conspiracy to falsify accounts under s 477A read with s 109 of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed) (‘the s 477A Charge’) and five charges of acquiring, possessing, using, concealing or transferring benefits of criminal conduct under s 47 (1) (b) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (Cap 65 A, 2000 Rev Ed). The s 477A Charge related to an alleged conspiracy between the respondents to issue an invoice from a company Questzone Offshore Pte Ltd (‘Questzone’) to a Chinese company ZTE Corporation (‘ZTE’). The s 477A Charge alleged that the invoice falsely purported to seek payment to Questzone as a subcontractor under a fictitious subcontract. The second respondent was a director of Questzone.

Following a direction made at an initial criminal case disclosure conference (‘CCDC’) convened under s 160 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cap 68, 2012 Rev Ed) (‘the CPC 2010’), the Public Prosecutor (‘the PP’) filed and served the Case for the Prosecution on the respondents. The Case for the Prosecution contained, inter alia, a summary of facts in support of the s 477A Charge (‘the Summary of Facts’). The respondents claimed that the Summary of Facts did not contain sufficient facts and brought an application seeking further particularisation of (a) the identity of the person allegedly defrauded, (b) the reasons why the subcontract was fictitious, and (c) the roles of each respondent and the acts committed pursuant to the conspiracy. The application was rejected by a district judge, and the respondents filed petitions to the High Court under s 404 of the CPC 2010 for revision of the district judge's decision.

The High Court judge (‘the Judge’) held that the consequences under s 169 of the CPC 2010 for non-compliance with the mandatory contents of the Case for the Prosecution were not exhaustive, and that the High Court's powers of revision were not limited by s 169. The Judge was of the view that the PP had to present a specific case as to the nature of the accused's fraudulent intention for a charge under s 477A of the Penal Code, including information of the person who was the object of that intention. The Summary of Facts therefore had to contain particulars in respect of categories (a) and (b) above in order to be ‘in support of the charge’, and the petitions were allowed in part.

The PP subsequently referred the following questions of law to the Court of Appeal pursuant to s 397 of the CPC 2010:

Question 1: Does s 169 of the CPC 2010 set out comprehensively and exhaustively all the available consequences for alleged non-compliance with the criminal case disclosure procedures in the Subordinate Courts under Div 2 of Pt IX of the CPC 2010?

Question 2: If the answer to Question 1 is negative, does the Magistrate or District Judge who presides over a CCDC have the power to order the Prosecution to furnish additional particulars in the summary of facts in support of the charge filed and served as part of the Case for the Prosecution?

Question 3: If the answer to Question 2 is positive, where the Magistrate or District Judge who presides over a CCDC has refused to order that the Prosecution furnish additional particulars in the summary of facts in support of the charge filed and served as part of the Case for the Prosecution, what is the legal threshold that needs to be crossed before the High Court should exercise its revisionary jurisdiction pursuant to s 404 of the CPC 2010 in respect of such refusal?

Question 4: Can the Prosecution be ordered to provide facts in relation to a specific intent to defraud for a charge under s 477A of the Penal Code in the summary of facts in support of the said charge that was filed and served as part of the Case for the Prosecution under s 161 (2) of the CPC 2010 where the Explanation to s 477A of the Penal Code specifically provides that it shall be sufficient in any charge under the said section to allege a general intent to defraud without naming any particular person intended to be defrauded?

Held:

(1) The requirement under s 397 (1) that the question referred to the Court of Appeal had to ‘affect the outcome of the case’ meant that the answer to the question had to have been one of the grounds upon which the High Court had decided the matter before it. The determination by the Judge of the four questions had affected the results of the criminal revisions, and there was no reason for the court to decline to exercise its substantive jurisdiction under s 397 (1) to answer them: at [20] to [22] .

(2) The drafting history of s 169 of the CPC 2010 did not provide any indication as to whether Parliament had intended for s 169 to exhaustively and comprehensively prescribe all the consequences for a failure by any party to comply with the statutory obligations under the CCDC procedures: at [29] and [39] .

(3) A CCDC court did not play a merely administrative or mechanistic role that was limited to overseeing the progress of the sequential CCDC measures. It was within the purpose of the CCDC regime that the court should assume an active role in case management at the pre-trial stage: at [41] .

(4) Section 169 could not be read as an inclusionary and not exclusionary provision, but the boundaries of the application of the expressio unius principle depended on the genus of the matters that were excluded by omission. Additional sanctions were therefore excluded by implication, but the imposition of sanctions was qualitatively different from directions on measures that had to be taken for compliance with statutory obligations. An order to particularise a summary of facts was a direction for parties to do what they were by statute already bound to do, and did not involve the exercise of an extra-statutory power: at [46] and [49] .

(5) Viewed from a pragmatic perspective, it was inherent in the progressive nature of the CCDC framework that it might not be self-executing, and the court ought to be able to facilitate the CCDC procedures and provide efficient remedial responses by intervening in disputes at the interlocutory stage when appropriate. The effectiveness of the regime in achieving greater transparency, fairness and efficiency would be undermined if the court's only role was to terminate the procedures by ordering a discharge not amounting to an acquittal under s 169 (2) or fixing the matter for trial: at [52] and [53] .

(6) Further, the CCDC regime contemplated a ‘right’ to information in the form of the Case for the Prosecution or Case for the Defence and the court ought to have the power to enforce such a ‘right’: at [54] .

(7) Question 1 was therefore answered in the negative - s 169 did not preclude any directions or orders that the court might make in relation to compliance with the statutory obligations under Div 2 of Pt IX of the CPC 2010: at [58] and [98 (a) ] .

(8) Question 2 was answered in the affirmative. The source of the court's power to order the Prosecution to furnish particulars relating to the summary of facts was found in s 160 (1) (a) of the CPC 2010, which mandated the convening of a CCDC to settle ‘the filing of the Case for the Prosecution and the Case for the Defence’. The term ‘settling’ implicitly included the power to do what was necessary to achieve the objective of resolving matters in dispute, and this necessarily included directions on timelines and orders to provide further particulars or information to comply with the statutory requirements: at [59] to [61] and [98 (b) ] .

(9) The High Court's revisionary powers under s 404 of the CPC 2010 were to be construed consistently with the general revisionary jurisdiction under ss 400-403 of the CPC 2010. The court's powers of criminal revision were statutorily conferred, and when reference was made to powers of revision, Parliament had to have intended this to be subsumed under the umbrella of the court's general revisionary jurisdiction and for the same judicially imposed threshold for intervention to apply: at [67] and [68] .

(10) Accordingly, Question 3 was answered as follows: the threshold for intervention under the general revisionary jurisdiction, viz,serious injustice, also applied to the powers of revision under s 404: at [70] , [71] and [98 (c) ] .

(11) Section 477A contained the mens rea...

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23 cases
  • Yong Vui Kong v PP
    • Singapore
    • Court of Appeal (Singapore)
    • 4 March 2015
    ...reasonably necessary to enable the person to do or enforce the doing of the act or thing. In Public Prosecutor v Li Weiming and others [2014] 2 SLR 393, a similar issue arose in relation to s 160(1) of the CPC, which states: Criminal case disclosure conference 160.—(1) The prosecution and t......
  • PP v Teo Chu Ha
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    • 27 August 2014
    ...(R) 681; [1997] 2 SLR 217 (refd) PP v Fong Kit Sum [2008] SGDC 58 (refd) PP v Henry Hsu Yen Shuenn [2012] SGDC 56 (refd) PP v Li Weiming [2014] 2 SLR 393 (refd) PP v Tang Eng Peng Alan [1995] 2 SLR (R) 672; [1995] 3 SLR 131 (refd) PP v Teo Chu Ha @ Henry Teo [2013] SGDC 61 (refd) Rainforest......
  • Public Prosecutor v Lam Leng Hung and other appeals
    • Singapore
    • High Court (Singapore)
    • 7 April 2017
    ...of the provision in relation to particular hypothetical problems that may arise” [emphasis added] (see Public Prosecutor v Li Weiming [2014] 2 SLR 393 Weiming”) at [82]) and ought not to be construed as an exhaustive list of situations wherein the offence might be applicable. Having regard ......
  • Public Prosecutor v Mohd Ariffan bin Mohd Hassan
    • Singapore
    • Court of Appeal (Singapore)
    • 14 February 2018
    ...of their cases and the evidence that each party intends to rely on at the pre-trial stage”: Public Prosecutor v Li Weiming and others [2014] 2 SLR 393 (“Li Weiming”) at [25]), there remains a real, obvious and undeniable gap between the resources of the Prosecution and accused persons in ge......
  • Request a trial to view additional results
2 books & journal articles
  • DISCLOSURE IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS: DEVELOPMENTS AND ISSUES AHEAD
    • Singapore
    • Singapore Academy of Law Journal No. 2022, March 2022
    • 1 March 2022
    ...where the Senior Minister of State for Law noted that the criminal justice system was meant to be progressively adjusted over time. 22 [2014] 2 SLR 393 at [52]–[53]. 23 Public Prosecutor v Li Weiming [2014] 2 SLR 393 at [54]. 24 See for instance the Court of Appeal's remarks in Teo Wai Cheo......
  • Criminal Law
    • Singapore
    • Singapore Academy of Law Annual Review No. 2014, December 2014
    • 1 December 2014
    ...Code: Intent to defraud 13.55 In January 2014, the Court of Appeal decided on a criminal reference in Public Prosecutor v Li Weiming[2014] 2 SLR 393, where the respondents were charged under s 477A of the Penal Code. All respondents of this case were involved in the issuance of a fictitious......

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