Public Prosecutor v Tee Kok Boon

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Abdul Rahim B A Jalil
• Judgment Date: 11 March 2005
• Neutral Citation: [2005] SGDC 58
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Published date: 21 June 2005
• Year: 2005
• Plaintiff Counsel: David Chew Siong Tai (Deputy Public Prosecutor)
• Defendant Counsel: S K Kumar (S K Kumar and Associates)
• Citation: [2005] SGDC 58

[Editorial Note: Click on the link to the PDF above to see the Notes of Evidence]

11 March 2005

District Judge Abdul Rahim Jalil

1 The accused, Tee Kok Boon, was convicted by me of the following charge:

You, Tee Kok Boon, M/36 years, S1829404D, are charged that you, between 20 May 2002 and 22 May 2002, at the Small Claims Tribunal, 2 Havelock Road #05-00 Apollo Centre, Singapore, in a judicial proceeding before the referee Ms Vivienne Ong, to wit, a hearing in the Small Claims Tribunal concerning a claim by M/s O K Property Pte Ltd (Claim No. H/CY/002345/2002), did intentionally give false evidence before the said referee by intentionally stating to the said referee that you had witnessed one Heng Siew Ang sign a Letter of Undertaking dated 26 November 2001 in respect of the rental of an apartment located at Block 5 Kellock Road #06-02 Kellock Lodge, Singapore which you knew to be false as you did not witness the said Heng Siew Ang sign the said Letter of Undertaking and you have thereby committed an offence punishable under section 193 of the Penal Code, Chapter 224.

The evidence adduced by the prosecution

2 Heng Siew Ang (‘Madam Heng’) is the registered owner of the unit at Block 5 Kellock Road, #06-02, Kellock Lodge, Singapore (‘the apartment’). In November 2001, she decided to rent out the apartment with the assistance of her husband, Tan Hock Hai (‘John Tan’) who was a housing agent with OK Property Pte Ltd. On 21 November 2001, John Tan placed an advertisement which included a telephone number in the newspaper for the rental of the apartment in the name of his real estate company, One Home Centre.

3 The accused called and asked if he could act as a co-broker in respect of the rental with John Tan. John Tan agreed. The accused introduced a tenant to John Tan and assured John Tan that the tenant was willing to rent the apartment for two years. John Tan agreed to give the accused a commission of $300 which would be refunded on a pro-rated basis if the tenant did not stay for two years as promised.

4 As the tenant was a minor, John Tan insisted that her guardian sign the tenancy agreement. On 22 November 2001, the letter of intent to rent the apartment was signed by the guardian, one Goh Pheck Pheck. However, on 23 November 2001, the guardian refused to sign the tenancy agreement and the accused told John Tan that he would find another guardian for the tenant. The next day, the accused faxed to John Tan the proposed terms for inclusion in the tenancy agreement that John Tan was drafting. These proposed terms were in the form of a blank co-broking agreement and commission agreement with the standard commission portion crossed out and replaced by a handwritten phrase ‘for two years $300’ (exhibit P6). On 26 November 2001, the accused faxed to John Tan the tenant’s passport number and requested for an appointment to sign the tenancy agreement.

5 John Tan’s testimony was that on the evening of 26 November 2001, the accused, the tenant, the tenant’s boyfriend and the new guardian, one Mohammed Hussain s/o Mohammed Farooq (‘Hussain’) met John Tan at a place at Cheong Chin Nam Road where Hussain signed the offer to rent and the tenancy agreement in triplicate. In the offer to rent, it was indicated that the tenant had rented the property through John Tan but that no commission was payable by Madam Heng to John Tan’s firm, One Home Centre. John Tan explained that this was because there was a co-broking arrangement where each housing agent was to look to his own client for his commission. Along with the offer to rent, the accused gave John Tan $3,400 in cash as the rental deposit.

6 On 29 November 2001, Madam Heng signed one copy of the tenancy agreement and this was faxed to the accused. On 30 November 2001, Madam Heng, John Tan, Hussain, the tenant, the tenant’s boyfriend and the accused met at the apartment where the remaining two copies of the tenancy agreement and the inventory list were signed by Madam Heng. On that same occasion, the accused issued a receipt for $300 being payment for commission for the apartment, and described it as ‘co-broking with John’.

7 What happened thereafter was that OK Property Pte Ltd instituted proceedings against Madam Heng in the Small Claims Tribunal for the recovery of its commission relating to the rental amounting to $2,200 that it alleged was due from her. In this respect, the accused, who was an employee of OK Property Pte Ltd and a witness for this company, testified before the referee of the Small Claims Tribunal that he had witnessed Madam Heng signing a letter of undertaking whereby she undertook to pay to OK Property Pte Ltd or Orient King Realty Pte Ltd a sum of $2,200 as commission for the rental of the apartment. Madam Heng denied that she signed the said letter of undertaking and that the signature in that letter of undertaking was hers.

8 During the proceedings before the tribunal, Madam Heng sent the letter of undertaking to the Health Sciences Authority (‘HSA’) for the purpose of ascertaining whether the signature in it was forged. Madam Heng however, decided not to pursue with the examination by HSA. On 24 May 2002, the referee ruled against Madam Heng and held, inter alia, that there was no evidence to show that the signature in the letter of undertaking was forged and that therefore Madam Heng was liable to pay the commission.

9 On 28 May 2002, one Liew Tuck, the Managing Director of OK Property Pte Ltd, retrieved the original letter of undertaking from the HSA and signed a letter promising to return the same when requested by the police or the court. Police investigations had been triggered off by a police report lodged by Madam Heng against the accused on 18 May 2002. When the police subsequently asked for this original letter of undertaking, Liew Tuck, in a letter dated 8 July 2002, informed the police that it had been misplaced.

10 The investigating officer of the case, Inspector Johnny Loo (‘Inspector Loo’), obtained a copy of the letter of undertaking (exhibit P15) from the accused. Liew Tuck confirmed that P15 was a copy of that letter. As P15 was a better copy than the copy that Madam Heng had, Inspector Loo sent P15 along with a number of specimen signatures of Madam Heng to the HSA for a handwriting analysis.

The handwriting analysis

11 Yap Bei Sing, the handwriting expert from HSA examined P15 and furnished a report (exhibit P18). He testified that every signature has some degree of variation which he termed ‘natural variation’. He noted there were eight differences between Madam Heng’s 117 undisputed signatures (which were made up of 17 specimen signatures and 100 request signatures) and the signature on the letter of undertaking (‘the questioned signature’) which were not the natural variations of Madam Heng’s signature. He ruled out the possibility that Madam Heng could have accidentally made these eight fundamental differences when signing the letter of undertaking. His opinion was that there was no evidence to suggest that Madam Heng had signed the letter of undertaking.

The defence

12 The accused did not dispute the prosecution’s version save that he maintained on the night of 26 November 2001, he met John Tan and Madam Heng at the apartment where he handed over to Madam Heng the tenancy agreement and a letter of undertaking that he claimed had already been signed by her. According to the accused, he gave one copy of the letter of undertaking to Madam Heng. The remaining two copies that he kept were subsequently given to Liew Tuck. In this letter of undertaking, Madam Heng undertook to pay to OK Property Pte Ltd or Orient King Realty Pte Ltd a sum of $2,200 as commission for the rental of the apartment.

13 The accused also said that he did not witness Madam Heng appending her signature on the letter of undertaking. He added that he was not present when Madam Heng signed the letter of undertaking. The accused further said that on the night of 26 November 2001 whilst Madam Heng and John Tan were going through the letter of undertaking, he proceeded to check on the items in a draft inventory list prepared by him. It was also his evidence that what he meant when he told the referee of the Small Claims Tribunal (‘the referee’) that he had witnessed Madam Heng signing on the letter of undertaking was that he had seen her signature. He claimed that when the referee asked if he had witnessed Madam Heng signing the letter of undertaking, he thought that she, the referee, meant whether he saw her signature on the document rather than he saw her actually signing. In other words, his version was that he had assumed that Madam Heng had signed the letter of undertaking but the act of signing by her was not done in his presence.

14 The defence called two handwriting experts in support of its case. The first expert, Professor Dr P Chandra Sekharan (‘Professor Chandra’) was the Director, Centre for Forensic Sciences, National Law University, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. He concluded that the questioned signature and the undisputed signatures were subscribed by the same individual. The next handwriting expert called by the defence, Harcharan Singh Tara (‘Harcharan Singh’) said that he was a Chemico-legal and Forensic Expert and Consultant who ran his own firm, H.S.T. Consultancy. He examined some documents and concluded that the questioned signature was most probably signed by Madam Heng.

Whether the referee was told by the accused that he had witnessed Madam Heng signing or had merely witnessed her signature

15 A finding as to what the accused had told the referee at the Small Claims proceedings would be relevant for the purpose of ascertaining whether the accused had given false evidence. On this issue, the testimony of the accused to the referee was clearly that he had witnessed Madam Heng signing on the letter of undertaking and not that he had merely seen her signature. The notes of evidence (pages 7 and 8 of exhibit D2) of the Small...