THE CLEAN MACHINE ANTI-CORRUPTION SQUAD IN SINGAPORE KEEPS CIVIL SERVANTS HONEST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303420015-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 26, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: January 9, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/26: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303420015-5
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
9 January 1980
"Let's face it, they've done a goal job," The
says a lawyer who has defended many cor- Asia," a
r:ption suspects. "There may be a bit of in- to say. 'Ch,ir, , my ninistPr in court.,
Justice here and there, but the end is worth- Singapore cam Ilion
1,-1w, enjlld
while, I dare say our police force is the, back in 1300, is ;vhatl You would callccom~ re
the cleanest whole in the world. They've cleaned out' pensive. It makes it illegal for ,,Jior p to:
city." o y y
Ever since the American. Congress; give. take, premise to give, or agree to Mace
passed a law making it difficult- to pay anything at all for doing (or not doing) any-'
bribes abroad, U.S. businessmen have com-, thing at all in connection with "any rnatte'rI
or transaction whatsoever
actual or
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Foreign Firms Note Rarity! the marketplace, especially in the graft-i posed." It applies to the public and the pri-i
nn soaked Third World. The argument doesn't! vale sectors, to payments considered;
Vrr Graft; Investigators have to be made in Singapore, an island, "customary," and to every Singaporean;
state of 2.3 million people (three quarters of! whether he lives here or in another country.
Axe Given Broad Powers l them Chinese) and a sequin of probity on Civil servants, in keening with depart- the soiled cloth of Southeast Asia. mental regulations, need permission to at-
T C lean lac hi rte
Anti- Corruption Squad'
In Singapore Keeps
Civil Servants Honest
A S200,000 House-and Jail
By B.axkY Nsw+raN
THSWALLSTREF:TJOrRNAL
SINGAPORE-On his- "festive rounds"
one Chime New Year,- postman idris Sin
Abu accepts a red packet containing Si from
a shopkeeper. As he turns to leave the shop,
Mr. idris is greeted by three officers of the
Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, Sin-
gapore's corruption police, who arrest him.
A shop assistant presses a crumpled note
worth into the palm of a policeman who
has dope him a favor. The policeman re-
ports it to the bureau. The shop assistant is
taken to court and fined $1,000, probably
more than three months' pay.
Asked for a 5 payoff by a traffic war-
den, a motorcyclist quickly jots down the
till's serial number and heads for the cor-
ruption police. The warden's fine: S1,750.
Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau
translates into Chinese as "Foul Greed In-
vestigation Bureau." Mention its name to
one of Singapore's 135,000 civil servants and
you will get a nervous giggle. Mention it on
the telephone and the civil servant will think
of an excuse to hang up.
Harsh and Effective
The bureau is housed modestly in an old
Methodist church and employs fewer than 50
investigators, but it is thought of as Singa-
pore's most feared enforcement agency. Its;
methods of extracting information are con-
sidered harsh !though bureau officials deny
it); and it has a seemingly free hand to go
after anybody suspected of corruption from
cabinet ministers to spies. Like many other
government endeavors. here, the bureau is
very good at doing what it sets out to do.
'.If anybody is asking for bribes, we'll;
pick him up," says P. Rajaratnam, the bu-'
reau's director. "We investigate, we take,
them to court, we plug loopholes, we get re-
sults. sults. We move around-all over. You want)
to keep Singapore corruption-free, you have
to have your tentacles everywhere. We have
an incorruptible government = everybody
must be incorruprible."_
"Incredible" Honesty
In two years as economic and political
counselor at the American embassy, Arthur
Bauman has heard of one'American com]
pany being asked for a payoff, and at a very,
low level. "That's incredible," he says.
Hughes Tool Co. just built a factory here..
Charles Hay, who watched over the project,
says, "We never experienced any graft. We
never had an indication it exists."
The No. 1 anti-corruption zealot is Lee
Yuan Yew. Mr. Lee, Singapore's hard-f
headed prime minister of 20 years' standing,
has limited admiration for flashy politicians
whose wealth seems to come from some-
thing other than pure public service.
"Nothing more undermines a developing
country's hope of success," he says, "than
the doubt in the mind of the worker that all
his energy is really to enrich somebody at
the top."
Mr. Lee never has taken kindly to slights
on his rectitude. A year after he took office,
the American CIA tried to co-opt a Singa-
pore intelligence officer. A CIA agent was
arrested, Mr. Lee disclosed a few years
later, and the United States proceeded.to of-
fer the prime minister and his political
party S10 million to let the man go. "The in-
sult!" Mr. Lee said. "I told them, 'You can
keep it.' "
Unwise Assumption
The agent finally was released for fear of
political reprisals; the bitterness, remained.
"They think that Singapore is a small coun-
try and that her people can be bought and
sold." the prime minister. said afterward.
"This is unwise." (In Washington, the 2IA
declined comment on the rr:atter. )
When opposition candidate J. B. Jeyaret-
nam obliquely implied in 1976 that the phme
minister was favoring his relatives' busi-
nesses, Mr. Lee sued for slander and won a
560,000 judgment. Leong Mun Kwai, another
candidate who wasn't so subtle, was found
guilty of criminal defamation and jailed for
13 months.
But don't take the prime minister's sensi-
tivity to mean that big fish never get hooked)
here. Last month the chairman of the Na-.!
tional Trades Union Congress resigned from'!
three of his top union jobs and was charged
in court with filching union money. In 1975,
the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau
grabbed Environment Minister Wee Toon
Boon for accepting a $200,000 house from an
tend a dinner put on by. a company or an
,embassy. They need a clearance to have
lunch with anyone who does business with
the government. If a civil servant receives a
gift, he must send it to the accountant gen-
eral, who will put a price tag on it and sell it
back to the lucky recipient. If the price is
too high (it usually is), the gift is sold at one
of the government's biannual auctions. Gifts
of food are sent to charitable homes.
The corruption police will tail a civil ser-'
rant who has a small salary and a large
car, following him to nightclubs and gam-
bling dens, totting up his debts. If the
worker is living beyond his means, the in-
vestigators will want to know how he man-
ages. "We don't harass, we don't disturb, weI
do it very car&fully," says the bureau's Mr.
Rajaratnam. "We're at the race track most
weekends."
'Around 100 bribery cases reach Singa
pore's courts in a year, and newspaper puub
'licity induces a flow of anonymous tips. Thel
:bureau pays for information, brit Mr. Rajar-
oatnarn says it doesn't hire spies; c!epartmen-
,tal supervisors form a built-in intelligence
.service, and the bureaucracy is mined
against corruption. Customs men, for in.
stance, must declare the money in their
pockets when they arrive at work. The bu-
reau raids regularly just before the men go
home.
When things fall nicely into place, the
corruption police perform their best mareu-
'ver: the ambush. A typical victim was Sgt-
Yussoff Bin Hassan, an army cook who was
accepting wilted vegetables from a grocer in
return for a gratuity. The bureau got wind
of this and picked up the grocer, Tan Hoo
Seng. He sang, and agreed to set up the
cook.
The next day, Sgt. Yussoff called to ccl-
lect,. and Mr. Tan handed over a few bills.
Bureau men closed in, and the cook fled. He
didn't get far. At his trial, he said he
thought the men were gangsters. The judge'
didn't believe it...:
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/26: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303420015-5