High Court Upholds Acquittal of Chinese Company Accused of Bribing Ex-LTA Official

The High Court has upheld the acquittal of a Chinese company that was charged with bribery after two of its employees gave loans totaling $220,000 to a Land Transport Authority (LTA) deputy group director.

- Selina Lum

In a written judgment on May 29, the court said there was insufficient evidence to show that the company's top management was aware of or somehow complicit in the illegal acts.

The Singapore branch of China Railway Tunnel Group was first acquitted of three corruption charges by a district judge in March 2024 on grounds that the two employees' acts could not be attributed to the company.

Xi Zhengbing, who was the general manager and head representative of the branch, and Zhou Zhenghe, who was a deputy general manager, gave the loans to Henry Foo Yung Thye between January 2018 and August 2019.

The district judge said Xi did not have a sufficiently high level in the chain of command. The Singapore branch is only one of the sub-departments within the company's overseas department, which is in turn only one department in the company's corporate structure.

The prosecution appealed to the High Court against the acquittal.

On May 29, the appeal was dismissed by a panel comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice Tay Yong Kwang and Justice Andrew Phang.

The court also noted that Xi and Zhou had resorted to defrauding the company with false invoices to obtain the $200,000 that was given to Foo as loans in 2018.

Zhou then had to borrow $20,000 to provide the subsequent loan.