Jail sentence for two lawyers who attempted to obstruct justice over cigarette contraband

SINGAPORE – Two lawyers who tried to obstruct the legal process were each sentenced to prison on September 30.

Lawyer Wee Hong Shern, 37, who sent another lawyer, Ong Peng Boon – then his direct supervisor – a text message related to contraband cigarettes in May 2019, was sentenced to seven months in prison.

Ong, 68, who passed the message to a third man named Tan Hock Ann, was sentenced to one year in prison. Tan was arrested in August 2019 for trafficking in duty-unpaid cigarettes.

In February, District Judge Marvin Bay convicted Wee and Ong of one count each of attempted obstruction of justice.

Before handing down the sentence on September 30, the judge said: “The facts show, in my opinion, that Mr Ong was far more involved in the criminal activities than his younger colleague.”

“The evidence shows that Mr Ong maintained a tight veil of secrecy in relation to his dealings with (Mr Tan)… Given the apparent secrecy, I suspect that Mr Wee’s involvement was for a much shorter period of time.”

However, Judge Bay emphasized that the current case involves two jurists who have a duty to uphold justice and facilitate legal proceedings.

He said: “Instead, they took advantage of their privileged status during legal proceedings to transmit and forward encrypted communications to a criminal organization in order to help the group avoid prosecution.”

According to court documents, Wee sent what he called a “cryptic” message to Ong at 11:52 a.m. on May 10, 2019.

The message said: “I spoke to Ah Boon for an update. Basically: Buffalo is broken. The factory is safe for now, but he warns that it’s only a matter of time before they find out where it is, since they have the SD card (SD card) from Ah Boon’s vehicle.

“You can track buffalo and eventually find a factory. So he told me to get everything out of the factory as quickly as possible. There is evidence that ST was paid by a Chinese man. His Zello phone was confiscated and he didn’t have time to delete convos. Bail opened at 55,000.”

The court heard that at the time, Wee was attending a court hearing of his then client Selva Kumar Subramaniam, who had been charged with trafficking in duty-unpaid cigarettes, before sending the message to Ong.

A minute later, Ong forwarded the message to Tan, who had previously hired the senior lawyer to represent Selva. Ong also followed up with another message saying, “Delete after reading.”