‘I asked Boon Gay what if the child is his’
You think it couldn’t get more shocking but it did.
In the fourth day of the trial of ex-Central Narcotics Bureau Chief Ng Boon Gay on Friday, the court heard that the state’s key witness, Cecilia Sue, made an earlier statement that she had a pregnancy scare during her relationship with the accused.
“When I was pregnant in the first quarter of 2010, I asked Boon Gay what if the child was his,” she said in a statement to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau on 3 May 2012.
“At that time, I felt Boon Gay was an irresponsible man because he did not want to show responsibility and he did not want to care either. He broke my heart,” she had declared. “It was then I decided to end my relationship with him. After I told him that I wanted to end the physical intimacy in September/October 2010, I did not remember giving him any indication that I liked him.”
When Ng’s defence counsel pressed her on about her CPIB statement, the 36-year-old former IT sales executive again insisted that she had no sexual intercourse with Ng.
“If you want to prove we have a relationship, I’m telling you we did not have…” she said. “Yes, I’m fearful of him but I think it’s time to stand up.”
Ng is accused of corruptly obtaining sexual gratification on four occasions from Sue from June to December last year by assisting to further the business interests of her then employers Oracle Corporation Singapore and Hitachi Data Systems in dealings with CNB.
Sue claimed that on each of the four occasions she was an unwilling partner and that on several occasions, Ng had forcibly pushed her head towards his crotch in the car and there was contact between her mouth and his private parts.
In further questioning by Ng’s defence lawyer Tan Chee Meng on Friday, Sue maintained that there were no other occasions that she was unsuccessfully forced into providing oral sex to Ng than the four mentioned she earlier mentioned.
Tan then pointed out to Sue’s statement to CPIB on 20 December last year wherein she said that after the first sexual encounter with Ng, there were more than ten times she engaged with oral sex with the former civil servant.
Asked to explain the inconsistencies in her statements, Sue said she was very tired and didn’t scrutinize her answers.
A few other discrepancies between her testimony for the prosecution and her statements to the CPIB were highlighted by the defence counsel in the cross-examination.
In another CPIB statement, she had said that she felt her liking for Ng “was strong enough to contemplate divorcing” her husband.
However, in response to Tan’s questioning, Sue denied that was lying to save herself from prosecution or to save her marriage.
She then claimed that she knew Ng “has problems with his wife” and that “his wife cannot give him certain things”.
Questions on influence
When the trial continued in the afternoon, the defence focused on Sue's knowledge of what influences the tender process at CNB.
Tan asked her if Ng used his power and position to influence the approval of tender, to which Sue said it was difficult to answer because she did not know what Ng had done.
The counsel then asked if Sue did not know what Ng has done, how could she say the ex-CNB chief influenced it.
The witness then changed her statement. "Can i rephrase? He can influence, that's it," she said.
"But did he?" asked Tan.
"I don't know," she replied.
The lawyer then proceeded to read out Sue's statement to CPIB wherein she had said that Ng did not and cannot influence the tender process at the anti-narcotics bureau.
"Boon Gay works on the recommendation of his subordinates. It's not possible to influence the results of those tenders," he quoted her as saying in the statement.
Also, according to her CPIB statement, she claimed she spoke to Ng about a CNB project but he did not want to discuss it, and, furthermore, when she joined Oracle and was forced to deal with Ng directly, he had said Ng told her he would leave it to his team.
