LHL’s CPIB has finally revealed that Iswaran had been arrested and bailed and that he was arrested on the same day as Mr Ong Beng Seng. Before this the PM announced that the Minister had been suspended and was barred from use of Ministerial resources or entering any Government building. Then that he had been told not to leave the country but subsequently it turns out that his passport had been impounded so how was he to leave? Unless he took instructions from Amos Yee. Lawrence Wong was doorstopped too and only gave us the euphemism that he was “helping an investigation.” The way the announcements were made in dribs and drabs with delays is far from reassuring and as far as possible from the promises of zero tolerance and “no sweeping under the carpet” With regard to information on OBS we originally relied on a statement from his company HPL.

Is it any wonder that rumours swirl rampant in Singapore society? There are so few facts. There is so little transparency. Worse, there is no mechanism for Singaporeans whether ordinary citizens or journalists for finding out facts such as the Freedom of Information Act that citizens in Britain can employ. Last time I took the government to court to get the truth once and for all and they denied me “standing” rather than produce the figures.

Currently the swirling mists are settling around the notion that the allegations revolve around hospitality Iswaran and his team at MTI received on a “fact finding” (a euphemism if ever there was one) mission to the UK’s Silverstone racing circuit in connection with the Grand Prix in Singapore.

When F1 first came to Singapore, negotiations were led by Bernie Ecclestone the UK billionaire who started Formula 1 and made so much money from it. A controversial figure, he said that he had saved Singapore from being just a city with an airport that people flew into and out of when going someplace else. He also controversially said women weren’t up to racing. Ecclestone, was arrested early this year in the UK on charges of concealing from the UK tax authorities the existence of a US$650 million trust of which he is the beneficiary and not paying tax on it. He was in court in June and will be back for his trial in November. He’s alleged to have hidden the money in a bank in, you guessed it, Singapore.

No wonder people are seeing dots and joining them.

The Asia Sentinel, which the PAP banned Singaporeans from viewing after they rightly refused to buckle under to a POFMA, has published an article alleging that documents produced during the pretrial process for Ecclestone showed items in the accounts for payments from Ecclestone to OBS reimbursing him for money he spent on Iswaran. Iswaran played a key role in the negotiations that extended the Formula 1 circuit to Singapore with the Night Race. Ong Beng Seng’s (OBS) company, Singapore Grand Prix Pte Ltd, is the local organiser of the event.

Hosting the Grand Prix here is estimated to cost the taxpayer $150 million a year and is of dubious overall benefit. While it may fill hotels and restaurants for a weekend the other costs in disruption, damage to the environment and the dubious kind of visitors its brings to our shores far outweigh the financial gain, plus the money paid to the organisers surely far outweigh it. The cost-benefit analysis produced by the notoriously corrupt management consultants McKinsey, which enjoys an opaque but no doubt lucrative relationship with the Government, for MTI is astoundingly imprecise as ever. What is obvious is that in addition to the 60% subsidies the Government admits to, other costs are provided by Government owned companies like SIA so it is not good enough for Gan Kin Yong to refer to only 60%. Money for merchandise and so forth goes directly to the event organisers and they bring in their own event suppliers and very little of that trickles back to the local economy and SMEs, except probably for GST. Many Singaporeans buy tickets just for the concerts, In fact they get up and leave the race early when mega stars like Adele are appearing, suggesting that we should scrap F1 altogether and just host concerts. Despite the less than fully enthusiastic welcome from Singaporeans last year F1 had managed under Iswaran and OBS to negotiate a new extended contract to 2028.

OBS is a name which for older Singaporeans will immediately conjure up his central role in the Nassim Jade scandal. This was when LKY, his brother, his wife and LHL all received secret pre-market discounts in the Nassim Jade development unavailable to the general public and even to minority shareholders. The shareholders were naturally incensed and complained and the Singapore Stock Exchange even officially censured HPL. LHL, a top maths graduate claimed that he didn’t even know he’d received a discount which doesn’t sit well with the fact that OBS had bragged that giving LKY a deep discount was good for business, “pour encourager les autres.”

PM Goh was the PM at that time and he declined to initiate a CPIB investigation. LHL and LKY were allowed to pay back the discounts but they got to keep the units they had bought even though they were purchased at premarket prices and thus undoubtedly lower than available to the general public after launch even without the discounts. Sounds familiar right?

GCT changed the rules afterwards so that Ministers were required to report property purchases and any discounts received to the PM (but sadly this did not cover bungalow rentals) thus tacitly acknowledging that approval for the discounts and purchases should have been sought.

Many have been shocked suddenly to discover that CPIB needs the PM’s concurrence before beginning an investigation and that it had to be sought in Iswaran’s case. However their shock reflects the way Singaporeans have been brainwashed into thinking that the PAP white indicates incorruptibility or that “ownself check ownself” represents the gold standard in compliance and due diligence. I have for many years demanded that the CPIB be removed from the Prime Minister’s control and made an independent agency just as I have called for the Elections Department to be separate and independent of the PMO as a basic requirement for free and fair elections. The appointment of the Director of CPIB should certainly be taken out of the PM’s hands.

The question of “Who Watches the Watchmen” as shown by Ridoutgate, TCJ’s disgraceful lack of impartiality and now the allegations against Iswaran is more urgent than ever. The President has the right to override the PM and order a corruption investigation to proceed even if LHL refuses to give his concurrence but everyone knows this is a hollow safeguard when the President is themselves a PAP puppet. Their override can in any case be cancelled by a two-thirds vote of Parliament which can be done the next day when the PAP control 90% of the votes. This my dear friends is why we always say that without a third of the seats in opposition hands we can never have an independent President no matter how independent minded the individual.

The Iswaran allegations, if the limited information from the Asian Sentinel is correct, would confirm one thing. Iswaran’s major crime would be stupidity. Their source said that the F1 accounts showed reimbursements for Iswaran’s use of the VIP lounge etc in Singapore. He’s put at risk his entire Ministerial career and continued receipt of million dollar plus salaries, all allegedly for free stays in London luxury hotels, visits to Silverstone and tickets for an Adele concert.

Contrast this with the cunning and intelligence of Shanmugam who as the Minister in charge of our precious land reserves, showed no concern that these were being mismanaged and in fact allowed prime properties to deteriorate and lie vacant for many years under his watch. Indeed under his watch land not built on became snake and mosquito infected in a First world to Third manner. He showed no interest in maximising the returns from our land, showing a blithe unconcern for the welfare of our children and our children’s children, which Indranee Rajah and Desmond Lee are always at pains to berate the Opposition for and hold up land value maximisation as the guiding principle of our country. After allowing them to deteriorate and lie empty he was able to request from his senior civil servant a list of vacant properties (a service I challenge the Government to show is available to ordinary Singaporeans) and rented the crown jewels for the lowest possible rent the SLA would accept. He was then able to acquire the enormous neighbouring parcel of land, which Teo Chee Hean (TCH) stood up in Parliament and declared was almost valueless, and get SLA to pay for savage land clearance that would have been worthy of a Brazilian cattle farmer in the Amazon. He ended up paying slightly over $300,000 a year for the whole plot of land that would be worth on its own around $600 million if redeveloped into new GCBs, or several billion if redeveloped for HDBs or condos. Putting that on a 2% yield the rent should have been about $12 million a year whereas his absurdly low rent values 26 Ridout Road at a mere $15 million, or coincidentally less than the price of a penthouse at the Nassim Jade condo. A similar logic applies to his buddy Balakrishnan’s rental of 31 at a rent of about $240,000 a year.

Let’s not forget that TCH, Shanmugam’s footballing buddy, found that there was no conflict of interest and no breach of the Ministerial Code when he reviewed the rentals of 26 and 31 Ridout Road. After all Shanmugam had asked him to approve them in the first place, another stroke of genius. Would TCH ever say he was sorry and had made a mistake?

I stress that Iswaran is innocent until proven guilty and we can’t even confirm what the substance of the allegations against him are. Indeed no charges may be brought at the conclusion of his investigation and he may be restored to his Ministerial role. But if there is any truth to the allegations then Iswaran is certainly guilty of gross stupidity although very good taste in being a fan of Adele. Shanmugam (and Balakrishnan) by contrast appear to be the smartest people in the room.

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam