SINGAPORE – A director at a construction firm awarded a contract by Gardens by the Bay hatched a scheme involving fabricated quotations, and 88 of these were submitted to the attraction.

As a result, Full House Building Construction was awarded 49 jobs worth nearly $766,000 in all from 2017 to 2018.

Goh Siew Ling, 51, who is no longer a director at the firm, pleaded guilty on Monday to 20 charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act and was sentenced to 13 weeks’ jail. Another 68 similar charges were considered during sentencing.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Vincent Ong said Goh, who is also known as Margaret, was a director at Full House from July 2013 to June 2018.

He told the court: “Margaret was the key mover and genesis of the conspiracy, whose directions set the entire scheme into motion and perpetuated it across different employees in Full House through her instructions. She is by far the most culpable person involved in the conspiracy.”

On July 4, 2017, Gardens by the Bay awarded the firm a two-year term contract for building improvement and maintenance work.

Under the contract, Full House had to carry out jobs such as structural, architectural, plumbing and sanitary work.

The contract had set out a schedule of rates (SOR) that listed the agreed rates for specified common building improvement and maintenance work.

For such jobs, Full House would invoice Gardens by the Bay according to the SOR.

Those with no rates specified in the SOR were known as “star rate items”.

For such items, Full House had to independently obtain three quotations from other firms. It was allowed to submit its own quotation as one of the three.

These submitted quotations would then be reviewed by Gardens by the Bay staff. If they were in order, the staff would make recommendations to their director for approval.

If Full House’s quotation was approved, it had to charge the quantum set out in its quotation without further mark-up and perform the work itself.

But from July 2017, Full House did not obtain genuine quotations from other firms for star rate items after Goh hatched a scheme to fabricate two quotations that were priced higher than the one from Full House.

As part of the ruse, two of her subordinates would prepare two fictitious supporting quotations using soft-copy templates of other contractors’ company letterheads stored on a thumb drive which Goh had provided.

The subordinates would intentionally price the two quotes higher than the one from Full House.

Full House’s quotation and the two fictitious ones would then be submitted to Gardens by the Bay staff.

On many occasions, the job was awarded to Full House.

Among other things, Gardens by the Bay in July 2017 requested Full House to do work involving star rate items described as “improvement work at Flower Dome for existing ramp”.

Falsified supporting quotations were submitted and Full House was engaged for the work, for which Gardens by the Bay paid $17,000.

The DPP said Goh has since voluntarily handed over $100,000 of the illicit gains to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau.

She is now out on bail of $20,000 and is expected to begin serving her sentence on Friday.