Corrupt Land Sale: Recovered $1.1m Back With Taoist Group

Source : The Straits Times, Jan 31, 2008

Money placed in the care of Taoist Federation as a charity fund.

A 15-YEAR-OLD saga of a corrupt land sale that sent three Taoist devotees to prison and bankrupted one family has come to a close.

Yesterday, in a room above the watchful gods of the San Qing Gong temple in Bedok, members of the Taoist Federation said the money recovered from the lawbreakers - about $1.1 million - has been placed in its care as a charity fund.

The money, said the federation’s chairman Tan Thiam Lye, will be used to help underprivileged Singaporeans pay for school expenses, medical treatment and other welfare services. Applicants for the fund need not be followers of the Taoist faith.

The return of this money to the charge of Singapore’s Taoist community has been a long time coming.

In 1991, the land on which sat the 100-year-old Kew Thian Neo Neo Temple in Balestier Road was sold for a tenth of its value - $132,000 - after three of its four property trustees accepted nearly $1 million in bribes from its buyers.

It was torn down soon after.

Two years later, the three trustees were found out, charged, and sent to jail.

The buyers, a businessman and his son, were spared jail time for their testimony, but were slapped with $6.3 million in fines.

More than 10 years later, the Attorney-General’s Chambers has decided to stop waiting for them to pay up the fine.

The businessman died in 2004, the same year his building supplies company closed down. His son declared himself bankrupt a year later.

Of the fine, father and son coughed up $952,000. Another $147,000 was recovered from the corrupt trio, rounding up the sum to $1.1 million.

The federation has appointed three new trustees to manage the money.

Unlike their predecessors, Mr Lim Chwee Kim, Mr Tan Tee San and Madam Maih Lan Ying hold respected positions in the Chinese community. They also come with years of experience in charity work.

Said Madam Maih, who has given away millions privately in the last 60 years: ‘This is the public’s money now. There will be strict controls and checks to ensure that every cent will go to a good and deserving cause.’

The Taoist Federation is not new to managing large amounts of money.

In 2004, it was appointed by the courts to handle $250,000 that came out of a legal tussle between the trustees of another temple - the Kew Ong Yah Temple in Upper Serangoon Road.

Currently, another $1.2 million of the temple’s funds is being held by the Public Trustee. That money is expected to be handed to the Taoist Federation for safekeeping, too.


FUND WILL BE PUT TO GOOD USE
‘This is the public’s money now. There will be strict controls and checks to ensure that every single cent will go to a good and deserving cause.’
MADAM MAIH LAN YING, one of the new trustees