Public Prosecutor v Gursharan Kaur Sharon Rachael

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Shaiffudin Bin Saruwan
• Judgment Date: 21 August 2018
• Neutral Citation: [2018] SGDC 217
• Docket Number: DAC 942782/15 & Ors
• Published date: 27 November 2019
• Year: 2018
• Citation: [2018] SGDC 217
• Plaintiff Counsel: DPP Jiang Ke-Yue & DPP Kelvin Chong Yue Hua
• Defendant Counsel: Mr Suresh Damodara & Mr Sukhmit Singh
• Court: District Court (Singapore)

District Judge Shaiffudin Bin Saruwan: INTRODUCTION

The Accused pleaded guilty to three charges under s 6(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, Cap 241 (“PCA”), and one charge under s 47(1)(c) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act, Cap 65A (“CDSA”).

Four PCA and one CDSA charges were taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing.

BACKGROUND

In 2012, Glen Defense Marine (Asia) Pte Ltd (“GDMA”), a company incorporated in Singapore, became the focus of bribery and fraud investigations in the USA. The investigations uncovered the largest and most extensive bribery and fraud conspiracy in the history of the US Navy. The decade long conspiracy involved scores of personnel across the ranks and reached the upper echelons of the US Navy. The highest ranking official involved was Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau, who held the dubious honour of being the first US Navy admiral to be convicted of a felony while on active duty. He was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for making false statements to investigators.

Investigations revealed that GDMA’s CEO Leonard Glen Francis (“Leonard”), widely known within the US Navy as Fat Leonard, had bribed US Navy personnel to, inter alia, divert US Navy vessels to ports in the Pacific and South East Asia where GDMA had a presence, and supply classified and other non-public information, including US Navy ship and submarine schedules, proprietary invoicing information, competitor’s quotes, and other procurement-sensitive documents. This allowed GDMA to secure lucrative ship-husbanding contracts to supply US Navy vessels at ports in the Pacific and South East Asia. GDMA also routinely overcharged for goods and services supplied at these ports, defrauding the US Navy of about USD 35 million.

To hide these misdeeds, GDMA submitted numerous falsified documents to the US Navy, including false competitor bids and inflated bids. Leonard also bribed insiders within the US Navy and the Naval Criminal Investigative Services (“MCIS”) to alert him whenever US Navy auditors queried suspicious transactions involving GDMA. These bribes were in the form of millions of dollars of gifts and expense payments, including some USD 500,000 cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars in prostitution services, first class airfares, luxury hotel stays, lavish meals, top-shelf alcohol and other luxury gifts.

12 US Navy officials have since pleaded guilty in the USA; nine of them (including Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau) have been sentenced to imprisonment terms of between 18 and 144 months, and ordered to pay penalties ranging from USD 30,000 to USD 450,000. Leonard, who pleaded guilty on 15 Jan 15, remained in custody in the USA. He faces a maximum custodial sentence of 25 years. He has since agreed to forfeit USD 35 million in personal assets.

Two former GDMA employees, namely Neil Peterson and Linda Raja Maslindah Bte Raja Samad, were extradited from Singapore to the USA, for their roles in the conspiracy. They have pleaded guilty and are waiting to be sentenced.

FACTS OF CASE

The Accused was employed by the US Government in 1989 as a procurement assistant with the US Air Force Contract Maintenance Centre at Paya Lebar Airbase. In June 1991, she was transferred to the US Navy Regional Contracting Command (“NRCC”), which was the predecessor of NAVSUP LFLC Singapore. NRCC provided contracting support to various US Department of Defence activities in the Pacific and South East Asia, with contracts in 18 countries and 45 ports.

The Accused began her career as a voucher examiner. She was later re-designated as a purchasing agent. She rose through the ranks and in 1999, she was promoted to Contract Specialist. In 2000, she joined NRCC’s Large Husbanding Division, which provided contracting and logistics support for ship-husbanding services required by US Navy vessels calling at ports in the Pacific and South East Asia. She was promoted in 2000 to Lead Contract Specialist, a role which required her to perform the duties of a senior contract specialist, as well as lead a team of contract specialists. In this role, the Accused was also a Warranted Contracting Officer, which authorised her to enter into multi-million dollar contracts on behalf of the US Government. She therefore stood in a position that required substantial trust, responsibility and accountability to the US Government.

Her job scope included managing complex ship husbanding contracts worth millions of dollars. This required her to, inter alia, draft and develop contract requirements, strategise and plan complex procurements, engage in sensitive foreign country coordination and discussions at senior management levels, conduct pre-award market surveys, solicit, negotiate and evaluate bids, and manage post-award administration. She was also required to evaluate the quotes provided by contractors, and to assess their performance after the services were delivered.

As an employee of the US Navy, the Accused was subject to US Federal regulations which prohibited, inter alia: (a) the disclosure of non-public information of the US Navy to external parties, and (b) the acceptance of any bribe, gratuity and/or any form of benefits in the course of employment. These regulation were regularly reinforced to her in the course of her work. She underwent annual ethics training on, inter alia, federal acquisition regulations, standards for contracting certification, anti-bribery and conflict of interest policies. She was also required to submit an annual declaration of potential conflicts of interest and/or receipt of any benefits from contractors that dealt with the US Navy. And once every two years, she was required to submit a declaration that she had reviewed the US Department of Defence directives which stipulates the ethical standards for its employees, including prohibitions on bribery and/or conflicts of interest.

The Corrupt Agreement

Leonard first became acquainted with the Accused when she was a Contract Specialist with the NRCC. Their interactions increased significantly in 2006 after she was promoted to Lead Contract Specialist. On numerous occasions between 2006 and 2013, the Accused initiated disclosure of non-public information concerning the US Navy to Leonard (“US Navy Information”) including, inter alia, procurement-sensitive information, strategic information on new ship-husbanding contracts, pricing strategy, price information of GDMA’s competitors, the names of personnel on the contract review board, and even the questions posed by the review board to GDMA’s competitors.

The Accused was aware that she was prohibited from disclosing US Navy Information to Leonard but she did so in order to give him advance notice of internal discussions, and other strategic developments in connection with such ship-husbanding services. This enabled Leonard to prepare more competitive bids, to ensure that GDMA would continue to secure lucrative ship-husbanding contracts with the US Navy. Both of them have an understanding that the Accused would be duly rewarded for providing the US Navy Information on an on-going basis, so as to ensure that GDMA retained an advantage over its competitors vying for ship-husbanding contracts with the US Navy (“Corrupt Agreement”).

The Accused took great efforts to conceal these illicit disclosures. These included: (a) transmitting the information to him via compact disks; (b) scanning emails and other confidential information, and forwarding them to him as attachments to emails sent from her personal email addresses under her married name: sharonstromme@gmail.com; and (c) on several occasions, passing photocopies of US Navy documents to Leonard’s driver at an agreed location.

The Accused also understood that, as GDMA’s “insider” within NAVSUP FLC Singapore, she was expected to further the interests of GDMA as far as possible and whenever the opportunity arose. To this end, on numerous occasions, she sought Leonard’s inputs on: (a) submissions that she had to make her superiors, and (b) written replies that she had to send out on behalf of the US Navy to GDMA’s competitors in connection with potential or on-going contracts with the US Navy.

Therefore the Accused did all these acts with full knowledge that her conduct was in breach of the Federal regulations and/or her duties of good faith and fidelity owed to the US Navy. Her annual declarations for the material period also made no mention of the conflict of interest that she had placed herself in, and/or her receipt of benefits from Leonard. The US Navy Information leaked by the Accused to Leonard was linked to 16 US Navy contracts. GDMA bid for 14 of them and was awarded 11 contracts worth a total of about USD 48 million.

DAC 942782/15 (4th Charge)

Sometime in Dec 08, Leonard arranged for the delivery of a Christmas hamper to the Accused at her Woodlands residence. Apart from liquor, chocolates and champagne, the hamper also contained a red packet with 50 pieces of SGD 1,000 notes. When she called Leonard, he told her that it was her “Christmas bonus”. The Accused understood that the money was a reward for supplying US Navy Information to Leonard pursuant to their Corrupt Agreement.

DAC 942784/15 & DAC 942785/15 (6th & 7th Charges)

Sometime in 2009, the Accused and her husband intended to upgrade their Woodlands HDB flat to a condominium. On 4 Apr 09, they visited the show flat of the condominium known as Double Bay Residences. They decided on the spot to purchase the unit located at Blk 21B #09-45 which was worth more than SGD 1 million (“the Unit”). But they did not have enough cash to pay the 5% Option Fee. She called Leonard and asked for SGD 50,000 cash to pay for the Option Fee. She knew that Leonard would agree given their Corrupt Agreement, and as Leonard had previously acceded to similar requests for money.

As expected, he acceded to her...