The shooting of a 34-year-old man by police outside the Shangri-La Hotel on May 31 last year was “a lawful killing”, a coroner ruled yesterday.

The officer who fired the fatal shot was simply doing his job of neutralising a perceived threat, when Mohamed Taufik Zahar drove through security barriers despite shouts to stop, and had no specific intention to kill, said State Coroner Marvin Bay.

Intoxicated on a cocktail of drugs, Taufik showed scant regard for the policemen trying to stop his car.

He was shot dead by a Gurkha officer on security detail outside the hotel, which was under tight watch as it was the venue of the Shangri-La Dialogue, a major security summit.

Despite repeated warnings to stop, Taufik accelerated his car past concrete barriers and towards a Vehicle Counter Assault Team of two armed Gurkha officers.

They opened fire after he breached the barriers and showed no sign of stopping. A fifth shot hit his head, killing him on the spot.

Taufik was on his way to Orchard Towers with two friends but had taken a wrong turn.

The trio were anxious to evade any roadblocks as they had all taken drugs and the two passengers had drugs on them. Taufik and one of them were also wanted by police.

In his findings, the coroner said the officers used their firearms as a last resort, having entirely reasonable grounds to assume hostile intent and that the car was carrying a vehicle-borne explosive device.

Man shot dead near Shangri-La hotel

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The New Paper, The Straits Times

They could not have waited further, he said.

“The car would have reached the protected premises in a matter of seconds if it had not been engaged and stopped, as the distance between the final concrete barrier and Shangri-La Hotel was a mere 33m to 34m,” the coroner said.

The second and third shots were fired as the car drove past the shooter, while the final round was fired as the car was already moving away from the same officer, presenting him with a small window of opportunity to bring the vehicle to a halt.

There was no option of leaving it up to chance that the car was not carrying any explosives, said Mr Bay. “If (the officer) had not engaged the vehicle, and if the car had in fact been carrying a vehicle- borne improvised explosive device, there might well have been catastrophic consequences.”

The coroner said there was a need to take terrorism seriously, noting the use of car bombs in terrorist attacks overseas and the Jemaah Islamiah network’s plan to use truck bombs here in 2001.

Taufik’s wife, Ms Nassida Nasir, 33, who married him two months before he died, said afterwards: “Our daughter is too young to know what happened to her father. I will have to find a way to explain to her when she is old enough to understand.”

amirh@sph.com.sg

xueqiang@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on April 23, 2016.
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Ai Takagi, the chief editor of socio-political website The Real Singapore (TRS), surrendered herself at the State Courts and began her 10-month jail term yesterday.

The 23-year-old was convicted of sedition last month after she pleaded guilty to publishing seditious articles on the website.

Her sentence was deferred till yesterday.

The court had found that the articles published by TRS were intended to “provoke unwarranted hatred against foreigners in Singapore”.

Takagi, an Australian of Japanese descent, had told the court she set up TRS in 2012 to let Singaporeans express their views without fear.

But the prosecution said the website was in fact a revenue-generating business.

The court found that Takagi was a “a shrewd businesswoman who was driven by financial gains”.

Takagi, who is 12 weeks pregnant, arrived at court yesterday with her husband, Yang Kaiheng, 27.

The case against Yang – who allegedly helped her run the site – is ongoing. He is expected back in court on June 22.

This article was first published on April 23, 2016.
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The Real Singapore duo arrested for sedition

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An Orchard Road shopping mall has not only banned construction workers from using its public toilets, but also threatened them with fines and expulsion if they disobey.

Wisma Atria has put up signs outside the men’s toilets on five floors telling construction workers to use only the toilet in the carpark on the fifth level, behind the cargo lift.

The signs, printed on paper in English and Chinese, warn that those who flout the rule will be fined and “immediately banned” from working in the mall.

Full-time volunteer Hoh Jian Yang, 26, spotted the signs while shopping at the mall last Sunday. He told The Straits Times he felt the signs were discriminatory.

He said: “Denying certain classes of people access to public amenities encourages the view that they are, in some way, lesser human beings.

“That these amenities were almost certainly constructed by workers themselves adds a new layer of perverse irony.”

A spokesman for YTL Starhill Global Reit, which manages Wisma, defended the signs, saying: “The restriction was to ensure that shoppers enjoy a conducive shopping environment within the mall.”

He said the restriction arose because shoppers complained about the workers showering in the toilets or washing their tools in the sinks.

He added that the restrictions have been in place since Wisma’s last major renovation in 2011. He declined to disclose the size of the fine levied or how many people have been penalised to date.

Construction workers The Straits Times spoke to at the mall said they had not noticed when the signs went up, mostly because they were aware of the restriction, so did not use the toilets anyway.

A 33-year-old Bangladeshi doing renovation work on the mall’s fourth floor said: “Every morning at the safety briefing, they remind us not to use the downstairs toilets. Our shoes are dirty and the public doesn’t like it.”

An Indian national in his 30s said: “There is a CCTV outside the toilets and if they see us go in, the penalty is to my company. So we cannot do it.”

Both men declined to be named as they feared reprisals against their employers.

While some workers said the carpark toilet was “okay for workers”, others found it far from ideal. A 31-year-old Malaysian carpenter, who gave his name as Nicholas, said in Mandarin: “It is really very hot. There is only one tiny fan. Especially in the last week, when it was so humid, it was not very nice.”

Singapore Contractors Association president Kenneth Loo said it was the mall owner’s prerogative not to have workers using the same toilets as customers, but there might be a cost factor involved in sending them to a toilet not close by. “If the worker has to walk very far, then you lose productivity.”

Advocates for migrant workers – who typically comprise a large proportion of construction workers – said a blanket ban might be going too far.

Transient Workers Count Too executive committee member Debbie Fordyce said workers should be advised against behaviour such as changing clothes openly or showering with the hose, but she did not think shopper complaints should have dictated an absolute ban.

“If the complaints are that they are making the floor dirty, they’re not doing it because they’re sloppier people. It’s just the nature of their work. They were asked to work in that area and they have the same physical needs that other people do.”

Said Mr Hoh: “They could just have easily have put up signs cautioning workers against showering or washing tools and told them to do it at the fifth floor toilet.

“Instead they decided that a policy of segregation was better. I feel it’s a disproportionate response.”

oliviaho@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on April 23, 2016.
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Singapore has spent $6 million on relocating more than 2,000 coral colonies which were in the way of a port development in Tuas.

They were moved from Sultan Shoal, south of Tuas, to the waters off St John’s and Sisters’ islands as land reclamation necessary for the port development could destroy them.

The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said the expenditure, listed in the 2016 Budget Book, includes work started in 2013 and which will continue up to 2019.

A spokesman said it covers “coral relocation works, development of coral nurseries, including transplanting of the grown coral fragments to new locations, monitoring of coral health in the new recipient sites, and monitoring of the remaining corals at Sultan Shoal”.

He said the project arose from an environmental impact study carried out in 2012.

Such studies are mandated by the Government, the MPA said, and the previous one was done before the Pasir Panjang terminals were built.

The Sultan Shoal coral relocation project was done with the National University of Singapore (NUS) and and the National Parks Board (NParks).

Some 2,300 out of 2,800 coral colonies were moved successfully and have survived.

“MPA continues to monitor the health and growth of the relocated corals,” its spokesman added.

Between now and 2019, the authority will monitor the health of remaining corals at Sultan Shoal.

Some coral fragments were also transplanted to Kusu Island, Lazarus East and Lazarus West “to rehabilitate the degraded reefs, and to establish new reef communities at non-reef areas”, he said.

SIM University senior lecturer Jason Morris-Jung said: “There is no benchmark to determine the dollars and cents’ worth of any particular conservation project that I am aware of.

“They usually need to be calculated on a case-by-case basis, depending on the particular characteristics of an eco-system and its particular human benefits or uses.”

He noted that coral reefs are important spawning and feeding grounds for fish, and hence they contribute to ocean fisheries.

“People also pay money to visit, snorkel and dive around coral reefs,” he said, adding that reefs also protect against coastal erosion.

He cited a World Wide Fund for Nature study, which estimated the global economic value of coral reefs at US$30 billion (S$40.5 billion).

The World Resources Institute said the cost of destroying 1km of coral reef ranges between US$137,000 and $1.2 million over a 25-year period.

“Some years ago, Dubai paid US$10 million to relocate some 20,000 coral colonies,” Dr Morris- Jung noted.

But he added that any financial analysis is inadequate because it is hard to put a value to an ecology that has taken “thousands or even millions of years to develop”.

christan@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on April 23, 2016.
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Several local remisiers are being questioned by the financial authorities over alleged breaches of the securities law after a series of raids on at least four brokerages this week.

The market is abuzz with speculation on what sparked the raids, who are being questioned, and which stocks are involved in the probe.

Remisiers are licensed stock trading representatives attached to – but not employed by – brokerages.

The last time a major raid took place was in 2014 over alleged trading irregularities surrounding the October 2013 penny stock crash.

Officials from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) visited DBS Vickers, Maybank Kim Eng, OCBC Securities and Phillip Securities starting on Monday and obtained documents and other items from them and some trading representatives.

DBS Vickers told The Straits Times yesterday it believes the brokerage is not under investigation.

An OCBC Bank spokesman also said OCBC Securities is not under investigation, adding: “A remisier, who is not an employee, is assisting with investigations. No OCBC Securities employees are involved.”

A source close to the brokerage said the authorities on Wednesday took the personal belongings of the remisier, including his mobile phone and laptop, but the brokerage’s property was not confiscated as part of the probe.

Maybank Kim Eng issued a similar statement: “Based on the information available to us, Maybank Kim Eng Securities itself is not the subject of these investigations.” Phillip declined comment.

When asked for further details yesterday, an MAS spokesman said yesterday: “As a matter of policy, MAS does not comment on its supervisory dealings with specific financial institutions.”

In a statement yesterday, the Singapore Exchange said it had reported several cases related to alleged insider trading and market manipulation. “In the January to March quarter, we referred nine cases to MAS of which three were related to insider trading and six to market manipulation,” SGX said.

The MAS has yet to disclose publicly which companies or counters their probe is focusing on.

However, there has been a wave of trading cautions issued in the last six months on firms whose share prices behaved erratically.

A source with direct knowledge of the matter said the authorities on Wednesday visited Maybank Kim Eng and took some documents.

Market sources said at least one remisier from DBS Vickers, along with one other from OCBC Securities, were also questioned over alleged manipulation of stocks.

A trader at Phillip said several CAD officers “spent around an hour” at the computer of a trading representative, a veteran of more than 10 years. “I’m not sure whether he was taken away for investigation – but I haven’t seen him in days.”

“One speculation on the floor is that the CAD is cracking down on a ‘pump and dump’ syndicate, where a group of remisiers rotate the shares around themselves to inflate the price. That was what happened during the penny crash, and in recent months there were quite a number of counters flagged for irregular volume and prices.”

The remisiers involved are said to have worked in the industry for some years now; some drive flashy sports cars, including Ferraris, to work.

Gibson Dunn partner Robson Lee said the MAS and CAD typically conduct joint raids when they “receive information showing that market misconduct may have been committed, and that there is a reasonable basis to believe that certain persons or entities are in possession of important evidence relating to any such offence which must be expeditiously secured”.

gleong@sph.com.sg

Additional reporting by Wong Wei Han

This article was first published on April 23, 2016.
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