Tang Wee Sung pleads guilty

A Singapore retail magnate pleaded guilty on Wednesday to two charges related to the city-state’s first organ trading case, local radio reported.

Tang Wee Sung, whose Tangs department store sits in the prime Orchard Road tourist and shopping belt, pleaded guilty to entering an illegal arrangement to purchase a kidney, 938Live reported.

He also pleaded guilty to falsely declaring that the donor was a distant relative, it said.

A court official reached by AFP could not confirm the pleas because the hearing was continuing.

Tang could receive up to three years in jail and a fine on the most serious charge of the false declaration, the radio report said.

It quoted Tang’s lawyer as saying he committed the offences because he is seriously ill and was desperate to survive. (story)

Durai begins serving sentence

T.T. Durai went to jail on Tuesday, but it was not the end of his troubles that stemmed from his leadership of the National Kidney Foundation.

He is to serve three months in jail for using a fake invoice to deceive the charity into paying $20,000 to an interior designer friend. He may have a month shaved off the jail term for ‘good behaviour’.

The 59-year old still has an outstanding charge to answer: of using a false invoice to approve a $5,000 payment to an advertising company. A court conference will be held next month.

He was cheery before media photographers when he appeared at the Subordinate Courts to turn himself in on Tuesday morning.

But it was a solemn and pensive Durai who left his Fort Road bungalow earlier in a champagne-coloured Honda Civic. (story)

Court provides no relief for pimp

Public safety is a priority, and when crimes that compromise this are commited, tough judgements are called for, said an Appeals judge on Tuesday.

The High Court therefore stayed the 6 1/2-year jail term for a pimp who hung out with an armed national serviceman in a Geylang hotel.

In rejecting the appeal by Ong Boon Jun, convicted in February of being with the soldier who stole an assault rifle from his camp, Judge of Appeal V.K. Rajah said:

‘For offences of this nature, we need to send a clear message that the law will come down hard.’

Court documents from last September said that full-time national serviceman Dave Teo Ming told Ong that he was going to commit a robbery with the SAR-21 assault rifle. (story)

DJ murder, judge explains sentence

A high court judge has explained why he jailed a woman who plotted the murder of her husband for only nine years, rather than throw her into prison for life.

Justice Chan Seng Onn said Aniza Essa, 25, was not likely to repeat her offence and, therefore, did not need to be locked up for good.

Prosecutors, who had asked that Aniza be sentenced to life imprisonment, are appealing against the nine-year jail term.

She had pleaded guilty to getting her 16-year-old lover to kill her husband Manap Sarlip outside the couple’s flat.

Justice Chan said the prosecution’s concern that Aniza might do the same again if released from jail was ‘highly speculative’.

Among other things, prosecutors had suggested in their written submissions that if, in the future, she were to enter into a second abusive or difficult marriage, she could fall into depression again and resort to the same violence to solve her problem. (story)

William Ding Chun Fong wins appeal

Former teacher William Ding Chun Fong, 36, on Wednesday won his appeal against conviction for molesting two schoolboys.

Four secondary school students accused Ding of molesting them in separate incidents between 2001 and 2005.

Ding denied the accusations and fought the case in an 80-day trial that spanned nine months.

He was found guilty in March last year by District Judge Jasbendar Kaur on three charges involving two boys and sentenced to a year’s jail. Ding was acquitted of six other charges involving the other two boys.

Ding choked back tears as an appeal judge on Wednesday acquitted him of molesting two schoolboys.

On hearing that he had won his appeal against his conviction last year by a lower court, he first appeared stunned. (story)