A former director at the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) has been found guilty and convicted of two counts of criminal breach of trust, involving the misappropriation of two iPads in September 2011.
Jeganathan Ramasamy, 63, was found guilty on Thursday (Oct 22) after a 10-day trial. He had assumed that the two iPads, worth a total of S$1,877, he had obtained from SCDF vendors were for personal use, when in fact the iPads had been entrusted to him for the purpose of testing out SCDF mobile applications developed by an external vendor.
He gave one iPad to his daughter, and sold the other to his colleague Mr Eric Yap Wee Teck, then a senior director at SCDF, for S$200.
Mr Yap is now commissioner of the SCDF, having been appointed in February 2012.
Jeganathan said in his defence that he was under the impression that he could test out the iPads in the hopes of purchasing them later on, but District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan dismissed this claim.
The judge is expected to deliver his sentence on Nov 16, after the prosecution and defence have made their submissions on sentence and mitigation, respectively. Criminal breach of trust by a public servant can attract a jail term of up to 20 years’ jail and a fine.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
