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Billionaire Singapore property tycoon Ong Beng Seng has pleaded guilty to his part in the city-state’s biggest graft scandal in decades, which led to the jailing of a former minister last year.
Ong, 79, admitted on Monday to offering gifts including a private jet flight to S Iswaran, Singapore’s former transport minister.
The scandal rocked Singapore, a country that has prided itself on its reputation for clean governance and corruption-free bureaucracy. Ministers in the city-state are among the highest paid in the world, earning about S$1mn (US$777,000) a year, partly as a means to discourage corruption.
Ong was arrested two years ago and charged in October on two counts of abetting Iswaran to obtain gifts and obstruct justice. He faces up to seven years in jail as well as a fine.
But on Monday, the prosecution said it accepted Ong’s lawyers’ argument that his incurable cancer and other health problems should be considered in sentencing and that imprisonment could be avoided. He is due to be sentenced on August 15.
Iswaran was sentenced to one year in jail last year for accepting gifts as a public servant and obstructing justice, becoming the first Singaporean minister to be imprisoned in nearly 50 years.
Ong, a hotelier and property developer, is one of Singapore’s richest men. He was also instrumental in bringing Formula 1 to Singapore, and his company still runs the city-state’s night-time Grand Prix.
The case centred on Iswaran’s position on the steering committee of the F1 race. Ong was accused of abetting Iswaran to obtain an all-expenses trip to Doha worth S$20,850, and helping the minister obstruct justice by making payments via his F1 company.
The former minister was sentenced for accepting more than S$400,000 ($310,000) of gifts, including flights, accommodation, sports events and tickets to English Premier League football matches, the Singapore F1 race, and musicals including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hamilton and Kinky Boots.
Ong was born in Malaysia in 1946, but later moved to Singapore and built up a family business that runs hotels around the world, including brands such as the Four Seasons and InterContinental.
His business has also worked on several transactions with Temasek, the state-owned investment company.
