A police report has been lodged against a former police officer, whose victim is alleging that he used his “high-level connections” during his time as a bodyguard of former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as well as an aide to former President SR Nathan to get people on board a sham investment scheme.
The report came to light after JMS Rogers, a debt collection firm engaged by the victim Sugendran Krishnan, issued a press release along with a copy of the police report.
Mr Sugendran alleged that he and his wife had been conned of S$50,000 by Mr Ananthan Thillagan, who is currently self-employed.
“He said that in the course of his work… he had met and known the inner circle of these politicians … He also said he and some of the powerful contacts he personally knows, including the Minister (for) Trade and Industry, had put in some of their money into this (investment) vehicle,” Mr Sugendran – a former policeman himself – wrote in the police report.
In its press release, JMS Rogers claimed that Mr Ananthan, 35, had “admitted his scam and even signed a promissory note on a repayment plan to our client for the monies owed”. It added: “He also pleaded that we do not report him to the authorities. Unfortunately, he has missed his repayment deadline and has since shown no remorse or sincerity in paying back what was taken.”
Responding to media queries, the police confirmed that a report was lodged on Monday and they are investigating. They added that Mr Ananthan resigned from the police force in July 2011. He was then holding the rank of Sergeant.
“Any criminal offence made out will be firmly dealt with in accordance with the law,” the police said.
When contacted by TODAY, Mr Ananthan would not confirm whether he had served in the police force and had been a bodyguard or aide to the VIPs, citing the Official Secrets Act. He added that his lawyers were looking into the matter. He declined to address the allegations, citing police investigations.
After months of controversy and spending S$1.5 million on new lighting equipment to try to improve the quality of the National Stadium pitch, Sports Hub Pte Ltd (SHPL) is making a drastic U-turn: It will resurface the pitch permanently with artificial turf — the surface it had originally considered but opted against, TODAY has learnt.
This means that less than six months after the new stadium was opened, the S$800,000 Desso GrassMaster pitch — a hybrid of synthetic and natural grass— faces the prospect of being replaced with an all-new synthetic surface.
Sources said the cost will be borne by SHPL. For promoters of sports events who insist on natural grass, TODAY understands that SHPL will install it over the artificial pitch temporarily and this can be done in less than 72 hours. In response to queries, SHPL chief operating officer Oon Jin Teik said: “We are exploring several pitch solutions that can cater to our multipurpose sports and entertainment calendar at the National Stadium. More details will be released at a later date.”
The consortium already has a nursery that is used to grow grass to be installed outside the football pitch for cricket matches that require a bigger turf. In future, this will also be used to grow grass for the main pitch.
In March last year, TODAY reported that SHPL had been considering installing artificial grass for the National Stadium in view of a hectic calendar for the 55,000-seat arena.
The plan was abandoned later in favour of the Desso GrassMaster. Artificial turfs are approved for use in elite competitions by international sports bodies such as FIFA and the International Rugby Board. However, some teams, including several English Premier League football clubs and international rugby sides such as the Wallabies and the Maori All Blacks, are known to insist on playing on natural grass.
When the stadium was opened in June, it hosted the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, among other events.
The pitch failed to recover in time for the high-profile football friendly matches between Juventus and a Singapore Selection side as well as between Brazil and Japan in August and last month, respectively.
A series of hasty measures were taken to help the pitch recover for the ongoing AFF Suzuki Cup, including cancellations of a concert by Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou and an Asia Pacific Dragons versus Maori All Blacks rugby friendly match. However, sandy patches were still visible on the field when Thailand defeated Singapore 2-1 in Sunday’s opening match.
Speaking from Spain, Mr Paul Burgess, chief groundsman for Spanish football club Real Madrid, said laying natural turf over synthetic grass is not uncommon. For example, Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, which has a permanent artificial pitch, installed natural grass temporarily for the 2008 Champions League Final between English clubs Chelsea and Manchester United.
“It has been done in many stadiums and can be installed very quickly,” said Mr Burgess. “All you need is about three to four days to lay the natural turf over artificial pitch. If you maintain it properly, it can last at least a month. If you don’t maintain it properly, it will last a day.”
The Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG) will receive S$250,000 over the next five years to help it operate more professionally, and to continue with its anti-terrorism efforts.
The money will come from the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS). This was discussed during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday (Nov 25) between the group’s leaders and some Malay-Muslim MPs, including Speaker of Parliament Halimah Yacob and Minister-in -charge of Muslim Affairs, and Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim.
The group had requested for the meeting to share concerns on how to sustain its efforts going forward. For the past decade, the group has been rehabilitating terrorists and fighting terrorist ideologies.
It also wanted its Resource and Counselling Centre at the Khadijah Mosque in Geylang to be professionally managed, with full-time staff. The Resource and Counselling Centre was launched four months ago and is managed by volunteers.
Said Dr Yaacob: “They have done well. Of course, the continuing threat of terrorism will be there for them to challenge. But going forward, I think they see an expansion of their role going beyond just terrorism, but how they can promote religious and social harmony in Singapore. And I think as an entity, it is a question of what do you want to become in the future.”
This was not the first time Ngiam Tong Dow had critiqued the PAP leadership. In 2003, he asked for more competition for PAP elites. His retraction is a desperate play of power by PAP, it may even be LKY bleeding for retraction. Given what Ngiam had said earlier in 2003, his retraction cannot be sincere.
1. About political competition.
“It is the law of nature that all things must atrophy. Unless LKY allows serious political challenges to emerge from the alternative elite out there, the incumbent elite will just coast along.
At the first sign of a grassroots revolt, they will probably collapse just like the incumbent Progressive Party to the left-wing PAP onslaught in the late 1950s.
I think our leaders have to accept that Singapore is larger than the PAP.”
2. Spreading of top talents between government and private sectors.
“When ten scholars come home, five should turn to the right and join the public sector or the civil service; the other five should turn to the left and join the private sector.”
3. Economics.
“Take our industrial policy. At the beginning, it was the right thing for us to attract multinationals to Singapore.
For some years now, I’ve been trying to tell everybody: ‘Look, for God’s sake, grow our own timber.’ If we really want knowledge to be rooted in Singaporeans and based in Singapore, we have to support our SMEs.
I’m not a supporter of SMEs just for the sake of more SMEs but we must grow our own roots. Creative Technology’s Sim Wong Hoo is one and Hyflux’s Olivia Lum is another but that’s too few.
We have been flying on auto-pilot for too long. The MNCs have contributed a lot to Singapore but they are totally unsentimental people. The moment you’re uncompetitive, they just relocate.”
Ngiam Tong Dow is not exactly alone among the insiders to criticize PM LHL’s government in recent years.
a. Dr Tommy Koh had called the income inequality as socially unconscionable.
b. Professor Lim Chong Yah, had a dramatic proposal to narrow the economic gap – raising low-level salaries by 50 per cent over three years and freezing top-end incomes for a similar period.
c. Yeoh Lam Keong, former chief economist at the Government Investment Corporation (GIC) headed by Lee Kuan Yew:
“What we need to do is to be much more stringent on admitting such unskilled labour. We’ve really got no excuse to be so relaxed about this kind of immigration.”
At every level of society, nothing is quite right for PAP. Even the insiders who are closely related to PAP feel that the policies are alienating people from the government. And Ngiam has correctly pointed to the way a closeted culture without competition had made the PAP too comfortable.
Contrary to their insidious assertion that Singaporeans are becoming too ‘dependent’, PAP is the one that is uncompetitive, unimaginative and relying on a compliant citizenry to have an easy life.
Thousands of people rallied late Monday in U.S. cities including Los Angeles and New York to passionately but peacefully protest a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer who killed a black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri.
They led marches, waved signs and shouted chants of “hands up, don’t shoot,” the refrain that has become a rallying cry in protests over police killings across the country.
The most disruptive demonstrations were in St. Louis and Oakland, California, where protesters flooded the lanes of freeways, milling about stopped cars with their hands raised in the air.
Activists had been planning to protest even before the nighttime announcement that Officer Darren Wilson will not be charged in the shooting death of Michael Brown.
The racially charged case in Ferguson has inflamed tensions and reignited debates over police-community relations even in cities hundreds of miles from the predominantly black St. Louis suburb. For many staging protests Monday, the shooting was personal, calling to mind other galvanizing encounters with local law enforcement.
Police departments in several major cities braced for large demonstrations with the potential for the kind of violence that marred nightly protests in Ferguson after Brown’s killing. Demonstrators there vandalized police cars and buildings, hugged barricades and taunted officers with expletives Monday night while police fired smoke canisters and tear gas. Gunshots were heard on the streets and fires raged.
But police elsewhere reported that gatherings were mostly peaceful following Monday’s announcement.
As the night wore on, dozens of protesters in Oakland got around police and blocked traffic on Interstate 580. Officers in cars and on motorcycles were able to corral the protesters and cleared the highway in one area, but another group soon entered the traffic lanes a short distance away. Police didn’t immediately report any arrests.
A diverse crowd of several hundred protesters marched and chanted in St. Louis not far from the site of another police shooting, shutting down Interstate 44 for a time. A few cars got stuck in the midst of the protesters, who appeared to be leaving the vehicles alone. They chanted “hands up, don’t shoot” and “black lives matter.”
“There’s clearly a license for violence against minorities, specifically blacks,” said Mike Arnold, 38, a teacher. “It happens all the time. Something’s got to be done about it. Hopefully this will be a turning point.”
In Seattle, marching demonstrators stopped periodically to sit or lie down in city intersections, blocking traffic before moving on, as dozens of police officers watched.
Groups ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred people also gathered in Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington, D.C., where people held up signs and chanted “justice for Michael Brown” outside the White House.
“Mike Brown is an emblem (of a movement). This country is at its boiling point,” said Ethan Jury, a protester in Philadelphia, where hundreds marched downtown with a contingent of police nearby. “How many people need to die? How many black people need to die?”
In New York, the family of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man killed by a police chokehold earlier this year, joined the Rev. Al Sharpton at a speech in Harlem lamenting the grand jury’s decision. Later, several hundred people who had gathered in Manhattan’s Union Square marched peacefully to Times Square.
In Los Angeles, which was rocked by riots in 1992 after the acquittal of police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, police officers were told to remain on duty until released by their supervisors. About 100 people gathered in Leimert Park, and a group of religious leaders held a small news conference demanding changes in police policies.
A group of about 200 demonstrators marched toward downtown.
The marchers shut down the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 110 in downtown Los Angeles late Monday night, according to City News Service. People stood and lay in the northbound lanes and the center divider.
Another splinter group of about 30 people marched all the way to Beverly Hills, where they lay down in an intersection.
Chris Manor, with Utah Against Police Brutality, helped organize an event in Salt Lake City that attracted about 35 people.
“There are things that have affected us locally, but at the same time, it’s important to show solidarity with people in other cities who are facing the very same thing that we’re facing,” Manor said.
At Cleveland’s Public Square, at least a dozen protesters’ signs referenced police shootings that have shaken the community there, including Saturday’s fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who had a fake gun at a Cleveland playground when officers confronted him.
In Denver, where a civil jury last month found deputies used excessive force in the death of a homeless street preacher, clergy gathered at a church to discuss the decision, and dozens of people rallied in a downtown park with a moment of silence.
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Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco; Jim Salter and Alan Zagier in St. Louis; Tami Abdollah in Los Angeles; Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio; Sean Carlin in Philadelphia; Deepti Hajela in New York; Michelle L. Price in Salt Lake City; and Joshua Lederman in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
