Penalties for Lying to the Authorities in Singapore

Last updated on October 4, 2024

Lying to the authorities is a criminal offence and encompasses a wide range of scenarios which include lodging false police reports and lying to health officials.

Under section 177 of the Penal Code, an individual who is legally bound to provide information to the authorities but knowingly offers false information instead is liable for a fine of up to $5,000, a jail term of up to 6 months or both.

Take this scenario as illustrated by the Penal Code for example:

A landholder, A, knows of a murder that has taken place on his property. However, he intentionally misinforms the police that the death was a mere accident and the consequence of a snake bite.

By the definition of section 177 of the Penal Code, A would be guilty of an offence for providing false information on the victim’s cause of death.

As mentioned, lying to the authorities can refer to various scenarios. To give you more insight, we will be delving further into the following offences in this article.

Making a False Police Report

Governed by section 182 of the Penal Code, anyone who intentionally provides a public servant with wrong information to mislead them into using their lawful power for certain acts, will be liable to a jail term of up to 2 years, a fine, or both.

To prove a section 182 offence, it needs to be shown that:

The accused person gave information to a public servant;
Such information was false;
The accused person knew or believed that such information was false; and
The accused person intended to cause, or knew it to be likely that he/she would cause the public servant to:
1. Use his/her lawful powers to injure or annoy another person; or
2. Doing or omitting to do anything that the public servant would otherwise do or omit to do (including causing the public servant to expend resources inefficiently).

In Public Prosecutor v Oh Hin Kwan Gilbert, the accused was a Director-General at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) who provided false information to the Deputy Secretary of the MFA who was conducting internal investigations into a breach of the diplomatic bag service between its embassies.

The accused had asked his colleague who was then attached to the Singapore Embassy in Beijing, to help transport a package from China to Singapore, falsely claiming it was for the parents of a Chinese diplomat. In reality, the watches belonged to the accused’s friend, Jiang Si.

When the MFA questioned him after the watches were discovered at immigration, the accused falsely claimed they belonged to his father to avoid disciplinary action and mislead the MFA.

Lying About an Offence That has been Committed

Section 203 of the Penal Code states that if you purposefully give the police false information despite knowing or having reason to believe that a crime has been committed, you can be sentenced to a jail term of up to 2 years, a fine or both.

This section essentially refers to intentionally misleading the police to help a criminal escape and avoid the legal consequences of his actions.

Tampering with Evidence

Interfering with investigations, by altering or destroying evidence with the intention of helping a criminal escape conviction, results in heavy sentences. The more serious the offence being covered up for is, the more severe the sentence:

If the offence being covered up for is punishable by death, you will be liable to a jail term of up to 10 years and a fine.

If the offence being covered up for is punishable by life imprisonment or for a jail term of up to 20 years, you will be liable to a jail term of up to 7 years and a fine.

If the offence being covered up for is punishable by a jail term that does not exceed 20 years, you will be liable to a maximum jail term of a quarter of the longest term of the original offence and/or a fine.

For more information on destroying and tampering with evidence, please refer to our other article.

Perjury: Lying or Providing False Evidence in Court

Witnesses are expected to tell the truth in court. Before they testify in court, for example, they are required to swear or affirm that they will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Erroneous productions of evidence and witness accounts in court may not only lead to false convictions, but also squanders resources that could have otherwise been invested in other cases and investigations.

With this in mind, Chapter XI of the Penal Code is dedicated to offences for various situations of falsified evidence and lays out their corresponding punishments.

For example, the punishment meted out for lying or consciously providing false information, despite being legally bound by oath to state the truth, is provided for in section 193 of the Penal Code.

Under this section, anyone who commits perjury and intentionally gives false information, or fabricates false evidence for use in any stage of a judicial proceeding, can be jailed up to 7 years and will be liable to a fine.

Lying to Immigration Authorities

Lying to the authorities does not only entail misinformation to law enforcement officials but other public servants, such as the immigration authorities, as well.

Section 28 of the Immigration Act explicitly states that any person entering or leaving Singapore is obligated to fully and truthfully answer any questions asked by an immigration or police officer.

Failing to be honest with the immigration authorities may end with you being liable for a fine of up to $2,000, or to a jail term of up to 6 months or both. Alternatively, knowingly producing any false or misleading documents could land you with a fine of up to $6,000, or to a jail term of up to 2 years, or both.

In addition, section 14(4)(a) of the Immigration Act dictates that if you have entered or are remaining in Singapore by way of a permit, and any information given in relation to your application for the permit is false, the Controller of Immigration may revoke the permit and declare your presence to be unlawful.

Once your presence is declared unlawful, you will be guilty of an offence. If you remain unlawfully in Singapore for 90 days or less, you could land up with a fine of up to $4,000 or to a jail term of up to 6 months, or both.

Should your stay exceed 90 days, you will be faced with a harsher sentence of a maximum jail term of up to 6 months and shall also be punished with at least 3 strokes of the cane.

If you are deemed to be not suitable for caning, you will be punished with a fine of up to $6,000 instead (on top of the existing jail term).

Furthermore, section 57(1)(k) of the Immigration Act criminalises the act of making a false statement to obtain or attempt to obtain an entry permit, re-entry permit, pass, Singapore visa, or certificate either for oneself or another person. If found guilty, the offender shall be fined up to $4,000 and/or jailed up to 12 months.

In the case of Goh Chin Soon v Public Prosecutor, Goh Chin Soon, a Singaporean, lied to the authorities by obtaining a Philippine passport through dubious means while being an undischarged bankrupt.

He needed special permission from the Insolvency and Public Trustee’s Office (IPTO) to travel but instead paid US$250,000 for the fraudulent passport bearing the name “Boris Jacinto Ngo.” Despite possessing a valid Singapore passport from 2012, Goh continued using the Philippine passport to bypass bankruptcy-related travel restrictions. Additionally, he deceived authorities by having his lawyers send a letter falsely claiming he was stuck in China, while he was actually in Singapore.

Goh was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for 1 charge under section 47(6) of the Passports Act and 6 weeks’ imprisonment each for 23 charges under section 57(1)(k) of the Immigration Act (with 2 of these sentences to run consecutively with the 18 months sentence). He was sentenced to a total of 18 months and 12 weeks’ imprisonment

Lying When Applying for Work Permits

Under section 22(1)(d) of the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, lying when applying for or renewing a work pass constitutes an offence.

If you make a false statement or provide misleading information which you know or ought to know is deceptive to an authorised person, such as officials from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), you may be fined up to $20,000, or jailed for a maximum of 2 years, or both.

In the case of Yu Huajie, a 37-year-old China national, was sentenced to seven weeks in jail for making false statements in his Employment Pass application.

In 2018, he sought to legalise his stay in Singapore by investing S$1 million in a company called Gashubin Engineering, following advice from a man known as “Bing Bing.”

To support his application, Yu falsely claimed to be a regional marketing manager with a degree from an American university, for which he paid US$10,000 for a fake certificate. His application was approved based on these misleading details. The scheme was uncovered in March 2021 when the Ministry of Manpower received information about potential violations. Yu is currently not a permanent resident of Singapore and has been allowed to defer his sentence until November.

Lying to Tax Authorities (Tax Evasion)

Typically, tax evasion is derived from the deliberate misrepresentation of profits and accounts to receive a lower tax liability. This is achieved by lying and omitting any information with regard to the income or profit you have made and are required to declare when filing taxes.

Section 96 of the Income Tax Act sets out that any person who wilfully intends to evade, or assist another party to evade, tax will be subject to a penalty of thrice the amount of tax undercharged, a maximum $10,000 fine, a maximum 3-year jail term or a combination of the three.

On the other hand, section 96A of the Income tax Act deals with more serious fraudulent tax evasion like the fabrication of documents (as compared to lying about or omitting income or profit information when filing their tax returns).

In this case, offenders may be sentenced to pay up to quadruple the amount of tax underpaid, a fine of up to $50,000, or a jail term of a maximum of 5 years or a combination of the three.

In September 2024, Roland Tay hai Choon was found guilty of understating his personal income by $250.312.49 and failing to account for $286,963 in Goods and Services Tax (GST), resulting in a combined tax evasion of $537,275.49 over a span of 4 years.

He was charged with 3 counts of making incorrect tax returns and 1 count of failing to register his businesses for GST when required. He was sentenced to a fine of $3,000 each for the four charges, totaling $12,000. He was also ordered to pay a penalty of $529,321.28 for his offences.

Learn more about tax evasion in Singapore in our other article.

Lying to Health Authorities

Section 64 of the Infectious Diseases Act (IDA) provides that providing false or misleading documents and information, and hindering any authorised figure with power conferred by the IDA, are punishable offences.

In the case of a first-time conviction, you may be liable for a fine of up to $10,000, a jail term of up to 6 months or to both. On the other hand, repeat offenders will face a fine of up to $20,000, a jail term of up to 12 months or both.

Amidst the coronavirus outbreak in February 2020, a couple from China was charged with giving false information to Ministry of Health (MOH) officials.

Chinese national Hu Jun had arrived in Singapore with his wife, Shi Sha, just nine days before he was confirmed to have COVID-19. Authorities reached out to the pair for their whereabouts to conduct thorough contact tracing, but the pair proceeded to lie about their movements.

Given the severity of the outbreak, their lies could have posed a huge health risk and danger to many other unsuspecting civilians.

Lying to the Traffic Police

One is guilty of obstructing, preventing or defeating the course of justice for road traffic incidents if they were to:

Lie to the traffic police about one’s identity, such as by providing false/misleading information or suppressing/altering information.
Mislead the traffic police by taking the rap on behalf of an offending driver (or allowing someone to do so on your behalf). For example, by falsely claiming that he/she had been the person driving the vehicle, and therefore the person who committed the traffic offence.

Persons guilty of either of these offences will be jailed for up to 1 year and/or fined up to $10,000. Offenders may also be disqualified from driving.

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Lying to the authorities can come with dire consequences and it is simply not up for debate that all information given to the authorities should be as truthful and factual as possible.

Hence when giving any information to the authorities, it is in the greatest interest of everyone to ensure that your information is unembellished and provided to the best of your knowledge.

If you have been charged with an offence for lying to the authorities, you may want to engage a criminal defence lawyer. A good criminal defence lawyer will know how to best defend you, disprove any false accusations against you and help achieve a fair outcome for your matter.

Should you require further assistance or legal advice, do not hesitate to reach out to any of our experienced criminal lawyers.