TR EMERITUS

1. Many people in Singapore clamored for the six Keppel executives to be given a severe punishment, instead of a warning, for their involvement in the Brazilian bribery scandal. I do not agree with this demand. Let me give my reasons. 2. I do not know the identities of these executives or the details of their actual involvement. I base my reasoning on the information that I could find from the internet. My information may be incorrect. 3. These senior executives did not personally benefit from the alleged wrongdoing. They were carrying out their work and tried their best to win the contracts for Keppel. They managed to win several contracts. 4. The senior executives (i.e. Keppel) had engaged a consultant in Brazil to obtain the necessary permits and approvals for the contracts and paid a "generous" fee to the consultant for the work. Keppel added this fee as the necessary expenses on the contract. 5. I guess that it would not be possible for Keppel to win these contracts without the necessary permits and approvals. If it was possible, I expect that the Keppel would have avoided paying the "generous" fee. 6. I also guess that Keppel had to compete with other bidders for these contracts. Keppel probably won the contracts by submitting the most suitable bid, based on price and quality. I do not have the actual details of the bids. 7. Keppel did have, at that time, the competence and experience to handle this type of contracts well, and probably better than its competitors. 8. Keppel used its subsidiary based in America to handle the project. Apparently, the activities of this US company came under the scope of US laws. 9. The US government investigated and found that the consultant engaged by Keppel had paid bribes to Brazilian officials. This contravened US laws. The US govt took action against not only the US subsidiaries but probably extended the action to include the senior executives in Singapore. 10. The board of Keppel probably approved the settlement of this case by paying a penalty of US$244 million to the US govt. I understand that this virtually covered all the profits made by Keppel in Brazil over many contracts carried out over many years. 11. This profit was earned through many years of hard work by a few hundred or thousand people. It was not earned easily just by paying bribes. 12. I understand that the US government shared 50% of the penalty with the Brazilian govt and 25% with the Singapore govt. They probably kept the remaining 25% for themselves. The sharing was probably in recognition of the "cooperation" extended by the other two governments. 13. I consider the action by the US govt to be unjust and that the executives, workers and shareholders of Keppel had been unfairly penalized. (For disclosure, I am a small shareholder of Keppel along with a few thousand other shareholders). 14. I do not consider it just for the six executives of Keppel to be given a severe punishment for their involvement in this case. I do not know them personally, as their identities are not disclosed. I consider the action taken by the US govt to be unjust in the first place.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

Late Sim Wong Hoo Thursday, 5 January 2023 marked the end of an era for Singapore. We, on this red dot, woke up to the news that Mr. Sim Wong Hoo, the founder and CEO of Creative Technologies (“Creative”) had died at the age of 67. The news report is as follows: [LINK] Mr. Sim was remarkable man and he was that most precious of commodities and something that is much needed in the Singapore system – a visionary. The great and good of Singapore are paying tributes to Mr. Sim and he’s been described as a “legend.” There’s no doubt that Mr. Sim deserves the praise. His story is more typical of Silicon Valley than Singapore, a society that prides itself in creating conformist and while Mr. Sim himself was never politically controversial, he’s the living example of why one should ignore traditional expectations (or in the case of Singapore government mandated expectations). I think back to an interview that Lee Kuan Yew once gave. He argued that whilst Singapore and other small countries could do well in the world, they could never build anything significant because they lacked economies of scale. Well, Mr. Sim proved him wrong – the Sound Blaster card became a global standard for sound in computers. Then, Mr. Sim defied stereotypes of Asian prosperity being about copying from the West and having no innovation. He tried to conquer the market for portable music through “Zen.” Unfortunately, he lost that battle. Only this time he lost the battle to Steve Jobs and Apple. He wasn’t afraid to compete with the best in the world outside his comfort zone. While Creative is a smaller company than it was during its glory days, Mr. Sim was, until the end still brimming with ideas as the following interview with Channel NewAsia suggests: [LINK] The icing on the cake of Mr. Sim’s story is that he disproves the idea that Singaporeans can only come up if they were from an elite school or worked in the civil service. Mr. Sim graduated from a polytechnic and spent his early years running a computer repair shop. Mr. Sim was the classic “tech-nerd” who happened to have a curious mind and was willing to explore. What should be noted is that when he had a product, he went to the government and got turned down. Let’s not mince words here, its most likely that our civil servants could not accept the idea of a non-scholar from a polytechnic would have the audacity to come up with anything ground breaking. Thankfully for Mr. Sim, the Americans were willing to back him and he was only recognised in Singapore by the powers that be when Creative got listed on the NASDAQ. Mr. Sim, himself, summed things up in his book “Creative Thoughts from the Old Millennium, where he described the subservient mindset of our local population through the term “NUTS,” or “No U-Turn Syndrome.” More on NUTS can be found here. In a way, you could say that Mr. Sim got lucky. He’s a creature from the Old Millennium – he is a baby boomer rather than Gen X, Y or Z. Whatever Mr. Sim might have lacked in his early years in terms of finance, papers and connections, he’s from an era where he was allowed to be a curious fellow even if he wasn’t a government scholar. Let’s think about it, Mr. Sim grew up in an era where geography mattered. When Singapore rejected him, he uprooted and went to the USA to seek funding before there was an internet or a developed VC industry. It’s not to say that Singapore hasn’t produced innovators. We have Tan Min-Liang of Razer inc and Henn Tan, the CEO of Trek200 International, the company that invented the USB. A list of some prominent innovations to come out of Singapore can be found at: [LINK] There is a notable trend in this list. Government plays a role in innovation in a very direct way. On the positive side, you can argue that government can play a role in fostering a decent eco-system for innovative entrepreneurship. However, this tends to work only if the government is interested in a certain sector. In Singapore’s case, government led innovation works for companies like Shiok Meats or the entire vertical farming sector where the government has an interest in say developing “food security.” What happens when innovation is not in the government’s interest? In his blog, Emanuel Daniel, publisher of the Asian Banker, has argued that the government has hobbled innovation in finance, forcing Fintech companies to be contractors to banks rather than competitors. Here’s the question, would the government allow innovation in the construction sector if it meant less need for foreign workers and therefore less levy? Let’s not kid ourselves – government does play an important role in fostering innovation. On paper, Singapore’s government does well in terms of providing a legal and financial infrastructure. However, can the government except the fact that innovation does from people who don’t fit a particular mold like Mr. Sim? Mr. Sim remains someone who was willing to go up against the biggest and best, which was the thing that made him pioneer on the world stage. Can the government accept both these parts of future Mr. Sim’s? For Singapore’s sake, let’s hope so.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

When news broke that three senior executives at SPH Media have been inflating its circulation data, the whole saga very quickly escalated into becoming a national embarrassment as more Singaporeans started questioning the integrity of those media executives in the media group under SPH Media in whom the People’s Action Party (PAP) government has generously supported despite many objections from Singaporeans who see it as a desperate attempt by the PAP to perpetuate its own political propaganda. Wong Wei Kong To make matters worse, when Wong Wei Kong, the editor-in-chief of the publications under SPH Media Trust (SMT), foolishly tried to subsequently narrate that SPH Media has taken a “painful but necessary decision to make public that its past circulation figures were inaccurate”, it gave a false impression that as if it was the one who had disclosed this deception on its own accord when the truth is that this whole saga came to light after Wake Up Singapore (WUSG) reported it. This goes to show just how insincere its editor-in-chief has been and how SPH Media has no qualms in trying to bend the narrative to play down the whole incident as if Singaporeans and their advertisers are all fools. Come on Wong, time to come clean and admit that SPH Media was caught with its pants down and stop trying to spin more lies or falsehoods. If not for WUSG, we would all still be kept in the dark, no? If the Chairman, CEO, senior executives, editors and journalists at SPH Media can still behave so insincerely and lack the moral courage to come clean, then the whole talk of setting up SMT is looking more like another desperate attempt by the PAP politicians to use tax-payers monies to prolong the longevity of their party rather than for the good of our country. It is very probable that inflating the circulation data may well be just a part of a wider scandal, and it is best for Singaporeans to brace themselves for more bad news to come. The Scandal Before this latest scandal, we have seen many of the 4G PAP politicians actively singing praises of SPH Media so that they can then justify the use of almost a billion dollars of public funds to keep it from sinking into obscurity in the next five years while allowing its previous shareholders and institutional investors like Temasek to discard all their liabilities and walk away from this sinking ship with a handsome profit while the new buyer of its assets gets a “good buy” out of this absurd arrangement. As the scandal slowly unravels, it is looking like those who had earlier taken Singaporeans for a ride may now find themselves being compromised by this latest scandal as if some bad karma had returned to taunt them. Up to now, it is totally incomprehensible as to why the leadership at SPH Media has been silent on naming those involved in criminally manipulating circulation data to cheat not only advertisers from the private sector but also our government. And as almost a billion dollars of public funds has been allocated to support SMT, shouldn’t the new Chairman, CEO and senior management be coming forward to hold a press conference and stop this scandal from escalating needlessly out of control? Criminalities & Wider Implications Given the criminalities involved in the deliberate inflation of circulation data and the cheating of advertisers and our government, why has no one from SPH Media lodge any police report so that the Police can act swiftly to prevent those involved from tampering or destroying critical evidence? But if SPH thinks that they can simply fire those three veterans to avoid making a police report or informing the government, probably thinking that the whole scandal can stay hidden by allowing those three executives have walked into the sunset, then its Chairman and CEO will have a lot of explanation to do. Besides our government and advertisers who got cheated, how is the authority going to address the manipulation of SPH’s stock price as a result of this scandal? By keeping quiet for so long, aren’t they all complicit in the crimes that were committed and shouldn’t they be held as liable as those three executives? Just how deep is the rot? Ng Yat Chung For failing to take decisive action, SPH Media has led some Singaporeans to speculate that the stepping down of ex-Lieutenant-General Ng Yat Chung in May 2022 as the former CEO of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) may have been connected to this latest scandal. Such an allegation is not entirely baseless when one looks at the tremendous amount of effort and resources needed to regularly print so many publications and then subsequently destroying them. As such, it is hard to believe that the previous senior management did not know or suspect something was terribly wrong at SPH unless everyone was sleeping on their jobs. It is equally hard to believe that such an elaborate scandal can be pulled off by just three executives without the help of more employees of SPH. If so, why wasn’t this scandal raised in parliament when Mrs Josephine Teo, the Minister for Communications & Information, was championing for the government to keep SPH Media economically viable by providing it with an enormous annual grant of up to S$180 million and is renewable after the first five years? Was Josephine aware of this malpractice, or have the former Chairman and CEO kept all these disturbing developments from her? As such, shouldn’t the former Chairman, CEO and directors be investigated and held liable for this scandalous crime too? And where did former MCI Iswaran get his data from when he was singing praises of SPH Media’s performance in parliament in May 2022 when stating that “SPH’s overall reach and readership has never been higher as its total circulation rose by 5% between 2017 and 2020”. In light of this scandal, are those data still credible, and if not, isn’t the parliamentary record also corrupted by this scandal? Now that the cat is out of the bag, both Josephine and Iswaran ought to consider addressing parliament to retract their earlier glowing statements for SPH Media for otherwise, the whole purpose and function of parliament is nothing but a joke, no? Who is going to pay for this scandal? For Mrs Teo, she will have to also address how SPH is going to compensate advertisers who have been cheated, including the government of Singapore, as it does not make sense for SPH Media to own up while the government dip into our reserves to help SPH pay for its financial damages, penalties and liabilities. Josephine Teo So it will be interesting to see who will ultimately end up paying for this scandal. Think about it – if those executives at SPH Media, past and present, can possibly manipulate its data to give a false impression that all is well at SPH, enjoy their lucrative remunerations and benefits all these years but end up cheating both the government and advertisers, by what authority does SPH Media have to fire those involved and not make a public disclosure or make a police report? Are they above the law to be doing so? Are they going to pay for all the mess they have created? As such, pending police investigation, the current senior management of SPH should be held responsible and complicit and not be allowed to destroy or tamper with evidence that may materially implicate them. It will be interesting to see if Mr K Shanmugam, the Minister for Home Affairs, will have the moral courage and integrity to put the law above the interest of his party by bringing all those responsible for this crime and those who condoned or tried to conceal it to court. As much of our public fund is at stake, will Mr Lawrence Wong, the Finance Minister, be able to show his political impartiality by convening a public inquiry into this whole scandal and conducting a thorough review as to whether the government should continue to support SMT when its integrity and credibility have been so badly tarnished. In light of this scandal, isn’t it “cheaper, better & wiser” to fund WUSG instead of SMT? Importance of check & balance This latest scandal at SPH is symptomatic of a large problem facing Singapore — the growing lack of transparency and accountability at many of our public and government-linked organizations and the rise of mediocrity over meritocracy. Think about it – the former CEO of SPH has already sold off our once highly-prized NOL and is now holding the dubious honour of stripping away the assets of SPH and handling them freely to its previous shareholders while getting the government to pump in hundredths of millions just to keep the non-viable part of SPH going annually. Seriously, what does an ex-paper general like Ng know about the complexities of the media industry where everything is dynamic, unlike the army, where everything can be stripped down to “command & order”. For shareholders like Temasek, isn’t Ng a very obedient and lucrative asset to cultivate, but at the national level, isn’t he a very costly liability? Singapore should get rid of all the ex-paper generals and mayors if we truly want to restore meritocracy and get rid of mediocrity. Without “check & balance”, there is no transparency or accountability to keep mediocrity in check, and when this happens, corruption will very quickly permeate and perverse every facet of the organization and our society. Question is, are we there yet? In this aspect, Singapore cannot afford to be caught in one scandal after another but must put in real effort to restore meritocracy, transparency and accountability in every of our public and government-linked entities. The Hard Truth is that if no real effort is put in to restore transparency and accountability across our public and government-linked entities, then it is only a matter of time before most of these entities will start rotting from the top, no? In this aspect, the senior executives, past and present, must be held responsible and be charged so that the message is clear – Singapore will not tolerate or allow anyone or any entity to make a mockery of our country, our parliament or our government. The ball is now in the court of the PAP-led parliamentarians and if nothing is done decisively, then this whole scandal will cause the PAP-led government to lose its integrity and credibility. So the challenge is, can the PAP politicians implicated by this scandal be able to show their impartialities and put the interest of Singapore and the laws above those of their party? Patriotic Singaporeans must scrutinize the development of this scandal and hold all those who dare perpetuate or make light of these falsehoods, manipulations and lies to accountability so that we can get rid of useless parliamentarians at the next General Election. Until the PAP politicians walk their talk and are able to do what is right by the people in a consistent manner, then Singaporeans ought to wise up to the Hard Truth that Singapore deserves better…   Joseph Nathan      Read More →