Ng Yu Zhi v Public Prosecutor [2025] SGHC 127

The accused person in this case (“the Accused”) was the director of two companies: Envy Asset Management Pte Ltd (“EAM”) and Envy Global Trading Pte Ltd (“EGT”). In a very small nutshell:

It was the Prosecution’s case that the nickel investment scheme was based on “pure fiction”, in that neither the purchase of nickel from the Australian mine, nor the sale of that nickel in the market, ever existed – any returns paid out to outgoing investors were in essence creamed from payments by incoming investors. The Accused, on his part, contended that his predicament arose only because of a temporary shortfall in liquidity and that in truth, many of the business enterprises run by him were quite profitable. He also took issue with the quantum of losses purportedly suffered by investors, as calculated by the interim judicial managers, saying that this did not reflect the actual losses sustained.3

The Accused was arraigned for 105 charges which alleged a range of offences, including:

The Accused was initially released on bail granted by the District Court. However, bail was revoked by the District Court on 7 February 2024 and he has been in remand ever since.

On 26 November 2024, the trial for 42 of the 105 charges above commenced (the remaining 63 charges having been stood down by the Prosecution). I have been presiding over the trial for 35 days and we are now at the point where the Prosecution has just closed its case and the Defence is due to present its evidence before the court. That is the procedural juncture at which the Accused has filed this application to me for bail, pursuant to s 97(1)(a) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 (2020 Rev Ed) (“CPC”).

I dismiss the bail application and set out my reasons below.

Background

On 16 February 2021, the Commercial Affairs Department (“CAD”) conducted a raid on the Accused’s premises. On 22 March 2021, he was charged in court and released on court bail of $1.5m. Thereafter, further charges were tendered against the Accused, with the result that on 5 July 2021, the District Court increased the bail amount to $4m. On 20 January 2023, the bail amount was increased yet again to $6m, after more charges were tendered.

On 1 March 2023, the Accused was released after bail of $6m had been collectively put up by the two sureties:

On 28 June 2023, Quek was replaced as surety by the Accused’s father-in-law (“the father-in-law”), who similarly furnished bail of $1.5m.

On 29 January 2024, the Accused was re-arrested on suspicion that he had committed fresh offences relating to attempts to sell a shophouse at Bussorah Street (“the Shophouse”). To explain these attempts, it is necessary to set out some background to the Shophouse:

Following CAD’s approval, the Accused’s wife delegated the conduct of the sale to the Accused.7 The Prosecution’s case is that the Accused had then made two attempts, involving two different buyers, to sell the Shophouse wherein the sale was structured to allow him to secretly pocket $500,000 of the sale proceeds. The Prosecution portrayed both attempts as follows:

CAD explained that the side payment of $500,000 to the Accused, as contemplated by both the attempts detailed above, effectively meant that the transacted sale price would have been underdeclared. A buyer proceeding with a transaction structured as such would thus expose himself to the risk of regulatory sanction for under-payment of stamp duty, as well as face constraints in getting the bank to loan him a quantum of funds sufficient to finance the effective purchase price. Given these downsides, CAD explained that buyers would generally be quite hesitant to proceed with a sale structured on such terms. CAD would thus have less reason to probe whether the buyer was indeed diverting part of the purchase price to the seller by way of such a side payment. That being the case, if either Buyer 1 or Buyer 2 had been minded to proceed with the sale notwithstanding the hazards just mentioned, it was entirely plausible for CAD to have unwittingly given the Accused the green light to proceed.

It was also the Prosecution’s case that the Accused kept his wife in the dark about how he was proposing to structure the sale of the Shophouse, notwithstanding that she was its legal owner. To keep her out of the loop, the Accused had procured an unknown female to impersonate his wife during a meeting at the conveyancing lawyer’s office, as well as to forge his wife’s signature on the option to purchase (“OTP”) for the Shophouse.

On 31 January and 7 February 2024, three additional charges were preferred against the Accused in respect of the two sale attempts detailed above (“the Fresh Charges”):

Upon the tendering of these charges, the Accused’s bail was revoked on 7 February 2024. He has been in remand ever since.

My Decision

Given that the Accused has been charged with, inter alia, non-bailable offences, the burden of proof is on him to show why bail should be offered: Public Prosecutor v Yang Yin [2015] 2 SLR 78 (“Yang Yin”) at [29]. In determining if an accused person has discharged that burden, the court must balance two potentially conflicting interests – see Muhammad Feroz Khan bin Abdul Kader v Public Prosecutor [2023] 4 SLR 1062 (“Muhammad Feroz Khan”) (at [26]):

In attempting to strike that balance, the court does not embark on a rigorous assessment invoking any particular standard of proof. Neither does the court seek to arrive at determinative findings of fact. Rather, what the court does is assess the evidence in its totality, without having to apply the strict rules of evidence, with a view to ascertaining if there are grounds to believe that there exists a real risk of abscondment: see Public Prosecutor v Sollihin bin Anhar [2015] 3 SLR 447 at [25].

It is also noteworthy that this is a case where the application for bail was made to me after bail had been revoked by the District Court (see [11] above). When an accused person makes an application to the High Court under s 97(1)(a) CPC after bail has been refused or revoked by the District Court, the situation is akin to that where the High Court exercises its revisionary jurisdiction over the District Court’s bail decision (notwithstanding that a formal application for criminal revision has not been filed and the application to the High Court is technically dressed as a first instance motion seeking bail pursuant to s 97(1)(a) CPC). Under such circumstances, the High Court would still apply the standard for criminal revision, meaning that it will grant bail only if it is satisfied that the District Court’s decision gives rise to “serious injustice”: Muhammad Feroz Khan at [18]. Having heard submissions from both sides, I am of the opinion that if the standard for criminal revision applies, there is no serious injustice in this case warranting a departure from the District Court’s decision to revoke bail, meaning that the Accused’s bail application should be refused.

I am nevertheless more inclined to the view that in light of the procedural history in this case (with me having presided over 35 days of trial thus far), my position in dealing with this bail application is more akin to that of a trial judge exercising his discretion at first instance whether to grant bail, rather than that of the High Court exercising its revisionary jurisdiction over the bail decision below. Even then, my conclusion would be the same – the balance in this case should be struck in favour of refusing bail.

My reasons for refusing the bail application are as follows:

I will cover each of these in turn.

Risk that the Accused will flee the jurisdiction if released on bail

This present application has been brought under s 97(1)(a) CPC, which allows the General Division of the High Court to, inter alia, release any accused person on bail at any stage of any proceeding under the CPC. Section 97(1) CPC is in turn expressed to be subject to s 95(1) CPC, which reads:

The evidence adduced thus far contains various indicators suggesting a heightened risk of the Accused fleeing the jurisdiction, should he be released on bail. In summary, these indicators are:

Each of these indicators are canvassed in turn below.

Access to forged foreign identification documents

In the course of CAD’s investigations, it was discovered that sometime in November 2023, the Accused had borrowed US$35,000 from one Wong Teck Far (“Wong”). The Accused informed CAD that these funds were meant to be applied towards procuring a forged passport. To induce Wong to lend him these funds, the Accused told Wong that he needed the forged passport to access a bank account in the United Kingdom. In truth, no such bank account existed. After remitting the US$35,000 to the Accused, Wong subsequently sought an update from the Accused as to the status of the attempts to procure the forged passport. The Accused responded to Wong by sending him an image which appeared to capture the following three items:

The image, which was stored in the Accused’s mobile device, is extracted below:

The image of the two cards above bore the Accused’s photograph and the name “Materska Vitomir”. As for the image of the passport (on the right half of the image above), this captured only the exterior of the passport – the personal particulars page within the passport could not be seen from the image. The Accused explained to CAD that he had obtained the image from one “Mark Harper”.

During the hearing of his bail application, the Accused argued that the fact that he had the image in his mobile device did not mean that he possessed forged travel documents. He claimed that the image of the two forged cards was created by digitally altering the image to superimpose his photograph on the two cards and that the altered cards did not exist in physical reality. As for the passport captured in the image, the Accused argued that there was nothing to show that the personal particulars within that passport page bore his photograph.

In my view, the Prosecution is right to be alarmed by the image of the forged identification documents. Defence Counsel confirmed that the Accused did receive the US$35,000 from Wong. I also find it noteworthy that the Accused’s affidavit omitted to explain how the US$35,000 was eventually spent. Certainly, the Accused’s affidavit stopped short of gainsaying that the US$35,000 was (as declared to Wong) meant to procure a forged passport. This then begs the question: If the bank account did not exist (see [18] above), what then was the actual purpose of the Accused’s endeavour to procure a forged passport? The Accused’s affidavit bore no insights into this. It also failed to offer any details about “Mark Harper”, such as who this person was and the nature of his relationship with the Accused. It clearly behoves the Accused to offer an explanation, given that images of fake foreign identification documents bearing one’s photograph are not things that people normally carry around on their mobile devices. More so in the case of the Accused, whose situation is anything but normal – he faces charges alleging him to have squirrelled huge sums of money overseas and which potentially carry a significant term in prison. Given that the Accused’s affidavit was bereft of the necessary details to address the above question marks, a reasonable observer viewing the image of the forged identification documents cannot be blamed for putting two and two together and inferring that the Accused had plans to flee the country.

I also observe that the image of the forged identification documents is something which was not before the District Court when the bail of $6m was granted on 20 January 2023 – the loan from Wong to procure the forged passport was procured only much later, in November 2023 (see [18] above). The discovery of the image on the Accused’s mobile device is thus a material change in circumstance occurring after bail was granted on 20 January 2023, altering the dynamics and militating against the grant of bail: see also Vang Shuiming v Public Prosecutor [2023] SGHC 289 at [32].

Financial resources which potentially lie at the Accused’s disposal should he flee the jurisdiction

Another factor which militates against the grant of bail in this case is the evidence of the Accused having channelled substantial amounts of his alleged proceeds of crime overseas. In Yang Yin, the learned Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon opined that access to sources of funds and the means to live comfortably overseas if the accused person absconds is a relevant consideration in deciding whether to revoke bail: see Yang Yin at [45(d)]. Clearly, this consideration would be equally apposite in deciding whether bail should be offered.

In the present case, there is evidence to suggest that the Accused may have spirited over $107m worth of assets to overseas jurisdictions, including China and Indonesia. This is seen in an affidavit affirmed by the Accused himself on 14 September 2022, which he filed in support of his application for an interim order under s 276 of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (2020 Rev Ed) (“the Interim Order Affidavit”), in which he proposed a voluntary arrangement to his creditors. In that affidavit, he stated:

Appendix 2 of the Interim Order Affidavit goes on to list various assets totalling $107,491,000 in value, many of which had been transferred to the Accused’s female friend in China, Li Qiong (who has not returned to Singapore since 2019 ).

CAD indicated that of the $107,491,000 reflected in Appendix 2 of the Interim Order Affidavit, $52.9m (ie, more than half), remains unaccounted for. CAD cannot ascertain the exact whereabouts of these assets as they lie beyond our shores. The Accused, on his part, countered that “many of the items in Appendix 2” of the Interim Order Affidavit have already been seized by CAD. If the Accused’s contention is true, it would mean that the financial wherewithal which might otherwise have been at his disposal (should he flee overseas) has now been safely repatriated to the hands of local law enforcement agencies. Yet, the Accused has been unable to substantiate his claim that the dissipated assets have indeed been recovered. No attempt was made by him to match the items in Appendix 2 of the Interim Order Affidavit (being the items which he himself admitted to having dissipated) with the inventory of items that were seized by CAD. The Accused claimed that it is difficult to conduct such a matching exercise as he is unable to physically examine the items concerned.26 In my view, this excuse fails to pass muster – the Accused ought to have at least made an effort to go through the items in Appendix 2 of the Interim Order Affidavit, line by line, to show how they might have translated into the inventory of items that were seized by CAD. He failed to do this.

Instead, what the Accused did was to selectively focus on a few specific items in Appendix 2 of the Interim Order Affidavit, which he claimed to have helped CAD to retrieve. I would observe that even for these items, the Accused’s explanations have not been particularly satisfactory. One of the items is a digital wallet containing 9,600 Bitcoins, worth about $14.456m. The Accused claimed to have “disclosed” the Bitcoins to CAD. However, it is unclear what the Accused meant by this, eg, whether he provided CAD with the wallet’s key or its pin. In any case, CAD confirmed that the Accused did not provide CAD with access to any Bitcoin wallet.

Quite apart from the $52.9m worth of assets from within Appendix 2 of the Interim Order Affidavit, which CAD says that it has not been able to salvage, there is evidence of the Accused having remitted substantial sums of cash overseas:

The upshot of the evidence is that the Accused may have transferred well over $90m worth of cash and assets overseas, all of which presently remain unaccounted for. Considering the sheer size of the amounts involved, saying that the Accused has the potential to “live comfortably” abroad (see [23] above) should he flee the country would be a colossal understatement. This must be regarded as a significant factor militating against the grant of bail.

Strength of the evidence

Rule 5(1) of the Criminal Procedure Rules 2018 (“CPR”) lists a range of factors which the court must consider when deciding whether an accused person will fail to surrender to custody, be available for investigations or attend court, upon being released on bail. Of relevance is the factor in r 5(1)(g):

In like vein, the learned Chief Justice observed in Yang Yin (at [44(a)]) that one of the factors relevant to the determination of whether to grant bail is whether there are reasonable grounds for believing the accused person is guilty of the offence.

It is thus necessary for the court, in weighing the risk of abscondment, to assess the nature and strength of the evidence against the Accused. While the rationale has not been spelt out in r 5(1) CPR, one can intuitively grasp why a stronger body of evidence against an accused person might increase flight risk. The stronger the evidence in support of the charges, the greater the likelihood that a conviction will follow. By the same token, the quantum of bail is usually pegged at a premium if an accused person is released on bail post-conviction: see, eg, Public Prosecutor v Nguyen Thi Tuyet and Aw Kim Huak [2017] SGDC 330 at [30].

The Defence argued that the Case for the Prosecution (“CfP”) was made available to the Accused from a very early stage of the proceedings, long before his bail was revoked. If he did not abscond then, despite having been apprised of the nature of the Prosecution’s case as captured in the CfP, the Defence reasoned that there is no reason to think that the risk of abscondment would be any greater now when the Prosecution has fully presented its case at trial. I disagree. The CfP gave the Accused a viewing of only a subset of the gamut of evidence marshalled by the Prosecution against him – the Defence conceded as much at the hearing of the bail application.31 Now that the Prosecution has closed its case, the contours of the body of evidence which the Accused must meet have been rendered far more explicit. The Accused has heard the oral testimonies of all the Prosecution witnesses and, more importantly, had the chance to mull over their responses in cross-examination. As the entire weight of the Prosecution’s case has now been brought to bear, the assessment of the strength of the evidence against the Accused must focus on the evidence at this present time, when he is applying for bail, and not back when the Accused was served the CfP.

With that in mind, I move to the relevant question at hand: does the strength of the Prosecution’s evidence (as it currently stands) weigh against the grant of bail? I cannot stress enough that as the Accused has yet to exercise his right to answer the case against him, the presumption of innocence remains front and centre. Having said that, I also cannot ignore the fact that even at this advanced stage of the proceedings – after having heard the questions posed by Defence Counsel when cross-examining the Prosecution witnesses – it is still somewhat unclear to me just what the Accused’s defence is. In his bail application, the Accused contended that his predicament arose only because of liquidity issues and maintained that he wants to demonstrate how many of the business enterprises under his control were in fact profitable – see [2] above. However, absent further particularisation, it is not apparent to me just how these assertions serve to negate the ingredients of many of the charges which the Accused must now answer. Until the mist clears over the exact shape of his defence (which will presumably happen once the Accused commences his testimony), I can only conclude that as of this juncture of the proceedings, the robustness of the body of evidence against the Accused has reached a point that is sufficient to convincingly tip the balance against the grant of bail.

Seriousness of the offence and the likely consequences

Rule 5(1) CPR also states that in determining whether an accused person will fail to surrender to custody if released on bail, the court must consider:

Both these factors were also alluded to in Yang Yin (at [44(b)] & [44(c)]) and Muhammad Feroz Khan (at [28]).

In the present case, the Accused has been charged with misappropriating amounts of monies that collectively add up to a sum that completely eclipses – many times over – any other figure which one may be minded to pull out from our local pool of criminal precedents. If the Accused is found guilty, and subject to the operation of valid mitigating factors, the custodial term may well approach potentially ponderous proportions. Given this prospect, a healthy dose of caution is called for before the court grants bail.

Risk that Accused provided his bailor with funds to post bail

When a surety posts bail, the pain of the bail sum being forfeited incentivises the surety to keep a close eye on the accused person and make sure that the latter does not abscond. The prospect of that pain being visited upon the surety concurrently incentivises the accused person not to abscond, particularly if the surety is a loved one whom the accused person cares about. It is thus self-evident why this framework of incentives, under which the “pull” of bail holds taut, loses much of its traction once an accused person funds his own bail. Consequently, it is impermissible for an accused person to indemnify the surety for the bail sum: see Yang Yin at [35]−[41].

In the present case, there is strong reason to believe that the bail of $1.5m put up by the father-in-law was funded by the Accused himself.

On the surface, the father-in-law appears to have borrowed monies from various third-party creditors to fund the bail amount of $1.5m. Specifically, the father-in-law signed five separate loan agreements, with one agreement being signed with each of the following five creditors, for the following five sums that collectively add up to $1.4m:

(i) Jason Tan

(ii) Esmond Ng

(iii) Quek Pei Ying

(iv) Ng Siew Kiat

(v) Hah Keng Shiang

If genuine, these five loan agreements would render the father-in-law personally liable (as a debtor) to make good on the funds which he borrowed under these loan agreements to fund the bail. This would mean that if the Accused absconds and the bail is forfeited, the father-in-law loses the money needed for him to repay the five creditors above, who could then sue him for it. The personal liability to which the father-in-law is exposed would thus incentivise him to ensure that the Accused does not abscond.

However, when CAD approached the alleged creditors listed above, it found that the first four individuals on the list (who purportedly advanced a collective sum of $1.35m) did not advance to the father-in-law the sums stipulated in the purported loan agreements. In truth, Jason Tan, Esmond Ng and Quek Pei Ying had signed their respective loan agreements with the father-in-law at the Accused’s behest, when they collectively visited the Accused at his residence, while Siew Kiat signed his loan agreement with the father-in-law at the behest of the Accused’s father. As for Keng Shiang, she informed CAD that she signed the loan agreement without knowing what it was, and at the behest of her son (who came to know the Accused while both were in prison ).

The Accused nevertheless maintained that he did not put up the funds for the father-in-law to post bail; all the Accused did was to broker the loan agreements that the father-in-law personally signed. However, this runs counter to information which the father-in-law himself had given to CAD, which was that the $1.5m bail posted by him comprised $1m from the Accused and $500,000 from the Accused’s friends. Investigations further revealed that these friends included:

In following the money trail, CAD discovered that the source of the funds used by the father-in-law to post the bail of $1.5m came largely from cash deposited into his bank account on 28 June 2023 (ie, the date when the father-in-law stepped up as bailor in place of Quek – see [7] above). The cash deposited into the father-in-law’s bank account included the transfers from Jason Tan, Esmond Ng and Keng Shiang, detailed in (a) to (c) above. CAD had further traced the bank accounts of these three individuals and found that the sums which they advanced to the father-in-law had in turn been similarly deposited into their accounts by way of large cash deposits on 27 or 28 June 2023.

The question thus arises as to whether the information which the father-in-law gave to CAD – to the effect that the funds which he used for putting up the bail of $1.5m came from the Accused – is indeed true and, if so, where the Accused got the money from. On this, CAD discovered that on or about May 2023 (ie, over a month before the father-in-law put up the bail of $1.5m), the Accused borrowed $1.7m from Wong. When Wong was approached by CAD, he informed CAD that he lent this amount to the Accused because the latter needed the money for the father-in-law to post bail.

Clearly, when the above jigsaw pieces have been put together, the resulting picture portrays a very strong likelihood that the Accused was indeed financing the bail posted by the father-in-law. This significantly diluted the pull of the bail posted by the father-in-law, fully justifying revocation of the bail order. Given that the evidence above suggests that the Accused has no compunction with spinning a web of sham loan agreements to camouflage the fact that the bail monies came from him, I am unable to discount the risk that he will engage in the same course of conduct if I were to grant him bail now. Again, this is a factor militating against the grant of bail.

Accused breached his bail conditions by offending while on bail

In determining whether to grant bail, the court should also consider the State’s legitimate interest in preventing the accused person from committing further offences while on bail: Sakthivel Sivasurian v Public Prosecutor [2023] 5 SLR 1588 at [53]. In furtherance of that interest, s 94(1)(c) CPC imposes the default bail condition that the accused person must not commit any offence while on bail.

The evidence before me suggests that the Accused may well have committed the offences reflected in the Fresh Charges (see [11] above), while he was on bail. To recapitulate, the Fresh Charges pertain to two attempts by the Accused to sell the Shophouse in a manner that allowed him to extract $500,000 of the sale proceeds to himself (see [9] above). To keep his wife in the dark about this scheme, the Accused had arranged for an unknown female to impersonate her and to forge his wife’s signature on the OTP at the conveyancing lawyer’s office (see [10] above).

The Accused sought to downplay the gravity of his actions by claiming that he had voided the OTP a couple of hours after his wife’s (forged) signature had been appended, as he had experienced a change of heart. However, no documentary evidence was tendered in support of this claim. Furthermore, the suggestion that the OTP was voided hours after his wife’s forged signature was appended runs counter to CAD’s evidence that the Accused subsequently went ahead to make not one but two attempts at orchestrating a sale of the Shophouse in a manner allowing him to pocket $500,000 (as reflected in the Fresh Charges). CAD’s evidence on this is backed by four eyewitnesses: the two property agents (Halim and Seah) as well as Buyer 1 and Buyer 2.

The Accused also tried to justify his actions by saying that his attempts at selling the Shophouse, as detailed in the Fresh Charges, were “impossible” attempts. The Accused explained that even before the two attempts detailed in the Fresh Charges, he had made earlier attempts to sell the Shophouse for $5.2m to $5.3m. However, the private trustees rejected these earlier attempts on the ground that the proposed sale price was too low. Accordingly, the Accused contended that the attempts detailed in the Fresh Charges could not possibly have succeeded, as they involved selling the Shophouse at a price that was even lower than that underlying the earlier attempts, which the private trustees had already rejected as being too low. I have my doubts about the Accused’s submissions on this. If the purported transactions reflected in the Fresh Charges were indeed “impossible”, on account of the price being too low, why did the Accused even bother to embark on attempting them in the first place? In any case, CAD produced evidence showing that the attempted sales as reflected in the Fresh Charges were not impossible:

In any case, it should be noted that an impossible attempt can still give rise to criminal liability: see Han Fang Guan v Public Prosecutor [2020] 1 SLR 649 at [108]. Rather than dwelling on whether the attempted sales in the Fresh Charges were impossible, the more pertinent question centres on the nature of the Accused’s conduct in embarking on those attempts. In that respect, the Accused displayed no qualms about machinating an elaborate ploy to liquidate and furtively siphon off half a million dollars’ worth of value from an asset that was already protected by a CAD prohibition order issued under s 35(1) CPC (see [8(b)] above). He went so far as to arrange for someone to impersonate his wife and forge her signature on the OTP. While I have refrained from making any conclusive findings at this stage of the proceedings about whether the wrongdoings were in fact perpetrated, I should highlight that the Accused admitted to the court, in the course of these bail proceedings, that he did procure an imposter to sign the OTP. In short, the breach of the Accused’s bail condition did not arise from an inadvertent infringement. He had purposefully set out to break the law by means of a sophisticated course of action carefully designed to avoid detection. This is yet another reason for the court to be circumspect before extending bail to him now.

The Accused also pointed out that the amount underlying the Fresh Charges was only $500,000, arguing that this was relatively small compared to the size of the amounts at issue in this trial. Revoking or refusing bail on account of the Fresh Charges would thus be draconian. Rather, the Defence argued that a more proportionate response would be for the court to simply raise the bail quantum and impose, as a condition of bail, that “no fresh offence be committed”. However, this submission ignores the fact that prior to its revocation, the Accused’s bail already incorporated a condition that he was not to commit any offences while on bail (by virtue of the operation of s 94(1)(c) CPC). This obviously held no sway with the Accused when he went about procuring an imposter to impersonate his wife and to sign the OTP. I fail to see how imposing that same condition again is going to keep the Accused in check, if he is released on bail again.

Remand will not prejudice the Accused’s conduct of his defence

Finally, the Accused contended that being in remand subjects him to a host of practical difficulties which severely constrain his preparations for trial. If this claim is sufficiently substantiated, it would be a valid factor to be taken into consideration when determining whether to grant bail. Thus, in Yang Yin, the learned Chief Justice remarked (at [44(h)]) that one of the relevant considerations when deciding whether to grant bail is “whether the grant of bail is essential to ensure that the accused has an adequate opportunity to prepare his defence”.

I have some sympathy for the Accused’s claim that it is practically more difficult for him to conduct his defence while in remand than if he had been on bail, especially in a case as document-heavy as this. However, closer scrutiny of the Accused’s grievances demonstrates that these difficulties are not as insurmountable as he made them out to be.

Firstly, the Accused claimed that he has difficulties in giving instructions to his lawyers when they visit him. Specifically, he is separated from them by a plexiglass barrier. Any written instructions that he may want to pass to his lawyer must be approved in advance, prior to the lawyer’s visit. If he inadvertently forgets to seek such prior clearance, the process of handing the written instructions over to his lawyer (sitting on the other side of the plexiglass) is likely to be delayed. The Accused also complained that he has limited visitation slots for his lawyer to see him in prison. Specifically, the Accused complained that despite the complexity of his case, his lawyers only managed to visit for a total duration of less than 16 hours. The Accused also said that upon commencement of the trial, his lawyers had made 34 bookings to see him but only 16 out of these booking slots actually materialised. Allegations were also raised by him about the Singapore Prison Service (“Prisons”) cancelling some of the bookings that his lawyers had made.

These claims were contradicted by evidence tendered by Prisons. Prisons explained that from 7 February 2024 to date, the Accused had 122 interview booking slots, for meetings with persons who appeared to be his criminal lawyers. As for the 34 booking slots which the Accused alluded to above, Prisons explained that 19 (and not 16, as alleged by the Accused) of the booking slots did materialise into meetings. As regards the remaining 15 slots:

(b) the remaining slot had likely materialised into a meeting after all.

Given this explanation from Prisons, I do not see how the insufficient utilisation of the slots could be attributed to Prisons. There is also nothing to show that the Accused’s remand status had in any way caused the no-shows / cancellations by the persons who had booked the slots to see him.

I would add that throughout this trial, I have explicitly expressed my concerns to parties on multiple occasions that Defence Counsel’s request for access to the Accused should be accommodated as much as possible, given the complexity of this case. The record of proceedings is replete with instances where I have acceded to requests by Defence Counsel to vacate slots ranging from half a day to more than a day, at material junctures where they needed to take instructions from the Accused in the court lock-up. These many indulgences would also have served to ameliorate any constraints which the Accused might otherwise have faced in accessing his defence team, if any.

Secondly, the Accused highlighted that he faced difficulties in corresponding with his lawyers. While in remand, he has a quota of four e-Letters a month. The Accused said that this quota of e-Letters was simply not enough, especially considering that the quota would have to be used not just for correspondence with his lawyers but with his family as well. The Accused claimed that despite the importance of these e-Letters, there were about three occasions in 2024 when his requests for an increase in his e-Letter quota were rejected. He also voiced fears that the prison authorities might be monitoring his correspondence with his lawyers “for intel purposes”.

In my view, the Accused has not provided me with sufficient details to assess the suggestion that the e-Letter quota had impacted on the preparation of his defence. No particulars were given about the dates when the requests for a quota increase were made by him and what the purpose of the quota increases were for, eg, whether they were for letters to his family or to his lawyers. Such particulars are necessary for me to make an assessment, especially since Prisons has filed an affidavit contradicting the Accused’s complaint. In its affidavit, Prisons explained that the Accused requested for an increase in his e-Letter quota only once (and not three times as claimed by the Accused) and that this was for a letter to his family (not his lawyers). That request was rejected by Prisons as the Accused had yet to exhaust his existing quota and had thus not demonstrated why an increase was even necessary at that point. The Accused has also failed to persuade me that Prisons’ practice of vetting his letters is undergirded by any sinister purpose. Such vetting is for security and good order and has been legislatively provided for.

The Accused also claimed that while in remand, he was deprived of access to his belongings, emails and archives. He also claimed that during the six-month period spanning from 29 January to sometime in July 2024, he did not have access to the CfP. However, these claims were rebutted by evidence from the Prosecution:

The Accused also complained of an incident which occurred on 15 March 2025, when he was moved out of his original cell and placed in a separate cell. This move was carried out as the Accused had apparently breached Prisons’ e-Letter rules by consuming the e-Letter quota of his cell mate. The Accused was thus moved to another cell so that Prisons could investigate the breach. The Accused claimed that he thought this move would be temporary and had thus left his glasses and his documents in his original cell. However, when he was not given access to these items even after four to five days, he requested for their return but this request was “not facilitated”. It was only two weeks later, on 29 March 2025 (being the Saturday before the commencement of the next tranche of trial on 1 April 2025) that he was given his documents. As for his glasses, the Accused said that Prisons handed these to him more than two months after that, on 8 June 2025.74 To refute these allegations, Prisons filed an affidavit affirming that the Accused:

In my view, the Accused has failed to demonstrate how this incident impacted on his defence preparation. As a preliminary observation, if he had indeed been concerned about preparing for his defence, it is curious why he did not bring his documents with him to the new cell. It is similarly curious why he waited for four to five days before asking for his documents. More importantly, the account narrated by the Accused, as regards how his request for his items was “not facilitated”, is vague to say the least. The Accused failed to provide any details as regards when the request was made, who it was made to and what the reason for the alleged refusal was. This makes it difficult to determine the extent to which this incident had impeded, if at all, the Accused’s preparation of his defence.

Finally, the Accused alluded to various other practical difficulties he encountered when preparing for his hearings while in remand. This included having to contend with “lights off” periods that were scheduled for various times of the day, as well as his inability to secure a pen to prepare his defence. In my view, the evidence fails to demonstrate that these alleged limitations were in any way material enough to hamper his ability to conduct his defence. The Accused’s grievances about the pen, for example, have not been convincing:

The more that the Accused’s account of his difficulties with the pen vacillated, the less convincing it sounded.

The Accused also alluded to difficulty in reaching out to witnesses, particularly those who may be more prepared to speak with him personally rather than through his lawyers. Again, this was a vague assertion. He did not name who the witnesses were, what attempts were made to secure their attendance, and how his physical presence would make a difference in persuading them to come forward and testify.

Overall, I thus do not find the conditions faced by the Accused in remand, as narrated by him, to be so difficult as to impinge upon his ability to prepare his defence.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the application for bail is dismissed.