At Iswaran’s sentencing last October, the court heard that Iswaran requested Ong bill him for a business class flight from Doha to Singapore, after he discovered that he could have been implicated while police were investigating a seperate incident. <\/p>\n
The judge said that he acted with deliberation and premeditation to avoid a probe.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the 79-year-old Ong pleaded guilty to belatedly billing Iswaran for the expense.<\/p>\n
A second charge of abetting Iswaran’s acceptance of the all-expenses paid trip to Doha, said to be worth around S$20,850 ($16,188; \u00a312,194), was also taken into account. <\/p>\n
In December 2022, Ong had invited Iswaran on the trip to Qatar, saying he would take care of the trip’s expenses, which included hotel accomodation and a flight to Doha on Ong’s private jet.<\/p>\n
Iswaran accepted the invitation but said he would need to arrive in Singapore on a specific date, with Ong responding that he would arrange for Iswaran to travel from Doha to Singapore on a commercial flight. <\/p>\n
It was this flight, said to be worth around S$5,700, that Iswaran belatedly made payment to Ong’s company for, after he found out that Singapore’s corruption bureau was investigating a separate investigation relating to Ong’s associates – and had seized the flight manifest which had details of his trip to Doha as part of it. <\/p>\n
He then asked Ong to have his company, Singapore GP, bill him for the trip. <\/p>\n
The two men were arrested in July 2023 and charge sheets revealed that Iswaran was gifted more than S$403,000 ($311,882; \u00a3234,586) worth of flights, hotel stays, musicals and grand prix tickets.<\/p>\n
At the time of the offences Iswaran was in the government’s F1 steering committee and the chief negotiator on F1-related business matters.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Hotel Properties Limited had earlier in April said that Ong would step down as its managing director “manage his medical conditions”.<\/p>\n
Singapore’s lawmakers are among the highest-paid in the world, with leaders justifying the handsome salaries by saying it combats corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Iswaran’s sentencing last October, the court heard that Iswaran requested Ong bill him for a business class…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-316427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114969001815915662","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}