F1 tycoon fined $23,000 in Singapore gift scandal

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - SINGAPORE — A Singapore-based billionaire has been fined $23,400 (S$30,000; £17,251) after he had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge connected to a gift scandal that shocked the country last year.

Hotel tycoon Ong Beng Seng had admitted to abetting the obstruction of justice by helping ex-transport minister Subramaniam Iswaran cover up evidence while the latter was being investigated for corruption.

Ong gave expensive gifts, including an all-expenses paid trip with a private jet ride, to Iswaran while they were engaged in official business.

The 79-year-old had faced a maximum penalty of seven years in jail but a judge said "judicial mercy" would be granted in light of his poor health.

Ong suffers from multiple myeloma, a rare bone marrow cancer.

At his sentencing on Friday, Judge Lee Lit Cheng said that an appropriate sentence for Ong would have been three months in jail, but imprisonment could "endanger [his] life".

In December 2022, Ong had invited Iswaran on a trip to Qatar, saying he would take care of his expenses, which included hotel accommodation and a flight to Doha on Ong's private jet.

Iswaran accepted the invitation but said he would need to return to Singapore on a specific date, with Ong responding that he would arrange for him to travel from Doha to Singapore on a commercial flight.

But Iswaran only asked Ong's company to bill him for the business class ticket home, said to be worth S$5,700, after he found out that Singapore's corruption bureau was looking into that flight as part of an investigation into a different case involving Ong's associates.

Ministers in Singapore cannot keep gifts unless they pay the market value of the gift to the government, and they must declare anything they receive from people they have business dealings with.

Singapore's lawmakers are among the highest-paid in the world, with leaders justifying the handsome salaries by saying it deters corruption.

The two men were arrested in July 2023 and charge sheets revealed that Iswaran had received more than S$403,000 ($311,882; £234,586) worth of flights, hotel stays, musicals and grand prix tickets.

At the time of the offences, Iswaran was in the government's F1 steering committee and the chief negotiator on F1-related business matters.

Prosecutors had argued that while Ong was pivotal in Iswaran's attempt to cover his tracks, he was much less culpable than Iswaran, who had been a sitting minister.

Ong's lawyers had argued that he "simply complied" with the plan thought up by Iswaran.

Born in Malaysia in 1946 - which was then Malaya - Ong moved to Singapore as a child and founded a hotel and property company in the 1980s.

Ong helped bring the F1 Grand Prix to Singapore and his company Hotel Properties Limited (HPL) has brands like the Four Seasons and Marriott operating under it.

Hotel Properties Limited had earlier in April said that Ong would step down as its managing director to "manage his medical conditions". — BBC