S’pore reviews anti-graft laws amid ‘get tougher’ calls

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s anticorruption watchdog said it is reviewing the country’s primary antigraft law amid mounting pressure on the government to toughen the rules in the wake of revelations of criminal wrongdoing at companies in the citystate.

Keppel Corp, which counts state investor Temasek Holdings as its largest shareholder, has agreed to pay more than US$422 million (RM1.65 billion) to resolve probes by US, Brazilian and Singapore authorities on charges it bribed Brazilian officials.

The disclosure has dented Singapore’s squeaky-clean image. It is ranked seventh-least corrupt nation in the world according to Transparency International, the global anti-corruption coalition based in Berlin.

Legal experts say that Singapore’s Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), the primary anti-graft law enacted in 1960, is outdated and inadequate in punishing and deterring wrongdoing in the corporate sector and needs to be bolstered.

“The Singapore government regularly reviews the provisions in the PCA with a view towards improving the anti-corruption regime in Singapore,” the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) said in a statement to Reuters late on Monday.

“The PCA is going through a review,” it said.

The bureau, which is Singapore’s anti-graft agency that investigates corruption in the public and private sectors, added it would be “premature to comment on the specific details at this point of time”.

The ongoing review was “not connected to the Keppel case”, a CPIB spokeswoman later said.

Keppel’s case was followed by revelation of extensive oil theft at Shell’s biggest refinery, leading to charges against employees of the Singaporean subsidiary of the oil giant and people who worked for one of Singapore’s biggest marine fuel suppliers.

For the PCA to be updated, experts on the country’s fight against corruption suggest raising the law’s financial penalty, currently a maximum of S$100,000 (RM297,000) per offence.