One Man's View

During small talk at a wake last year, somebody was awfully confident about the outcomes of the corruption cases concerning Peter Lim (Singapore Civil Defence Force) and Ng Boon Gay (Central Narcotics Bureau). Sure enough, Lim was jailed and Ng was acquitted. The whiff of intrigue spelt power play at high levels.

PM Lee's sacking of CPIB Director Eric Tan over a mere $1.7 million embezzled by Edwin Yeo, an Assistant Director, confirms the rot is indeed well entrenched and system wide. After all, not a whimper was raised when Balakrishnan blew $387 million.

The following 2012 account culled from the internet may fit Ng Eng Hen's definition of DRUMS - Distortions, Rumours, Untruths, Misinformation and Smears -  but as they say, there's no smoke without fire. The curious observer will note that all the component parts, warts and all, form a perfect fit.

This is a smoke screen. It's a cover up of an investigation gone wrong and heading no where. It's part of a bigger conspiracy from a prolonged power struggle within MHA, resulting in severe collateral damage.
The current Director of CPIB, Eric Tan, was in ISD during the 1987 Marxist Conspiracy. As a relative of Monsignor Francis Lau, Eric played an important role between ISD/Singapore government and the Church. Since then, he earned the trust of the then Director ISD, Benny Lim, and has been backed by the latter till date.
Eric is well known within MHA to be a hot-blooded rash person. For example, in GE 1991, when still in ISD, he was deployed to observe the crowd in a Potong Pasir rally. Instead of following the agreed rules of engagement (trailing and identifying trouble makers, and passing the leads to police for arrest), he identified himself as a police officer in a crowd of thousands and tried to arrest the trouble makers. That action of him nearly caused a major riot. He received a warning letter for his rash act. But he was backed by Benny Lim.
Unfortunately he did not learn his lesson, and did a similar stunt in GE 1997 when he was still in ISD. But with backing by Benny, he enjoyed smooth career in MHA moving from ISD to SIR to CNB and to ICA. But his rash behaviour never changed. In 2005, Benny became the Perm Sec of MHA, and Eric's flag flew even higher.
However, due to his weakness, he was never considered for the post of Commissioner of Police despite strong backing by Benny. This is especially true when he had a very strong contender - Lock Wai Han, who happens to have two very good drinking friends in the police force - Ng Boon Gay and Paul Lim.
For some strange reason, Paul Lim at a private birthday dinner in Shangri-La was accused of molesting the Shang Palace waitress in 2009. The case was leaked to the press too. At that time, Director CID was Ng Boon Gay. But because of their closeness, Deputy Director CID Wong Choon Mann was appointed as the IO for Paul's case. Paul had his lucky break, his friend at the dinner happened to film the occasion and the said waitress was filmed teasing the guests including sitting on laps. Paul resigned before PSD initiated the internal disciplinary proceeding. During that time, Paul was avoided by many in MHA, but Boon Gay and Peter Lim believed in him and continued to meet him.
A year later, 2010, Boon Gay and Wai Han were implicated in insider trading and investigated by CPIB. There were insufficient evidence. Wai Han resigned and he is now based in China. Boon Gay was posted as Director CNB. And the first thing he uncovered and went public was the years of wrong drug statistics before his time, when the Deputy Director CNB then was Ng Ser Song. Coincidentally, Ser Song was a young ISD officer with Eric in GE 1991. And, Ser Song now replaced Boon Gay as Director CNB.
With no strong candidate, an unlikely officer, Ng Joo Hee, was selected as Commissioner of Police. He is the first CP without the major foundation postings - Director Ops and Director CID. He had his disciplinary cases in his younger days too, such as losing his Investigation Papers. But he did once work for Benny in ISD. Another ISD connection. As the CP now, he can't be bothered with policy, planning and management. He is only interested in outdoors. And with this new found fame, his IT headhunter wife, Joyce, has been telling her customers and candidates about her husband.
Sensing that his position is weakening especially since Benny is due to be posted out of MHA, Eric accepted the post of Director CPIB on 1 Oct 2010. Soon in 2011, Benny took over as Perm Sec PMO. Eric is once again with Benny. Eric pulled along Choon Mann (who investigated against Paul) to become Director Investigation in CPIB. Knowing that Eric has grudges with many officers in MHA, there were talks since 2010 that many in MHA would be in trouble.
The golden opportunity presented itself. A sore loser in the IT industry (Derrick Leau?), made a false report about money and sex involving SCDF and CNB. Still a hot-blooded rash person, Eric directed his team to take action including arresting Peter and Boon Gay before sufficient surveillance and preliminary covert investigation were carried out.
After weeks of investigation and many more people arrested/called up, CPIB found no evidence of money and sex as alleged by the "whistleblower". Around the same time, the latter leaked to the press to pressurize Singapore government. This explains the first CPIB press release of "serious personal misconduct" as opposed to alleged corruption, and subsequent releases and interviews with Ministers including PM. In Singapore, sex in return of favours is definitely classified as corruption.
CPIB is now in a panick mode. They made a big blunder by rashly arresting two HODs and many senior officers and even people from the industry, many from NCS. They now need to dig out every small things that they can get hold. They even interrogated the arrested people to justify small little things such as simple meals and golf games. I believe Ministers and MPs attended even more
dinner and golf game!
With no knowledge at all how the IT industry operates for win-win for government and vendor, CPIB even asked staff of NCS why they knew the budget of certain projects, and why they are the only bidder, why they bidded just below the budget, etc. I guess RFI (request for information) to CPIB means Requires Forced Interrogation.
Perhaps CPIB investigators did not realize that when Eric was Commissioner ICA from 2005 to 2010, he was entertained frequently by NEC and EDS (now HP). And they probably did not know that NEC won a contract as a sole bidder at $4,999,999, one dollar below the actual budget.
The root of this power struggle and conspiracy was planted during the Marxist Conspiracy. Many more senior people in the government were once the core ISD team involved in the operation. Back then, PM Goh Chok Tong was even quoted "Was the ISD not making a mistake? Were they not over-reacting?"

The writer went on to propose that the SPF should arrest Eric Tan for wrongful arrests and many other abuses. Lay defamation charges against the SPH and the papers, he suggested. Arrest the false "whistleblower". This is certainly One Man's View that has all the makings of a best seller.