Man jailed 27 months for siphoning company's funds and CPF contributions
He was entrusted with his company’s CPF contributions and funds meant for creditors and suppliers, but Sivassankar Gunasegaran ended up siphoning more than $150,000 for his own use.
And even after getting arrested and charged in court, the 27-year-old went back to his old ways at a new company – this time to finance his legal fees in addition to other personal expenses.
At the State Courts on Monday (10 July), Sivassankar pleaded guilty to three counts of criminal breach of trust (CBT) – two under his previous company, and one under the latest one – and was sentenced to 27 months’ jail. One additional CBT charge and four forgery charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
The court heard that Sivassankar was employed by Polystar, a cleaning and landscaping services company, on 8 January 2013. He was the sole person entrusted with submitting the company’s CPF contributions and with paying suppliers and creditors.
Arumugam Pitchay, Sivassankar’s boss, would rely on Sivassankar to tell him about the payments and would either issue him a cheque or deposit money into the latter’s personal bank account. These would be sums of up to $20,000 each time.
Four months into the job, in April 2013, Sivassankar began to misappropriate the money entrusted to him. To avoid detection, he would take funds from creditors whom he knew were less likely to alert his boss to any discrepancies, said Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) David Koh.
Sivassankar would also inform his boss that CPF payments had to be made promptly and urgently so that the boss would hand him payments regularly. Between May 2013 and April 2014, Sivassankar misappropriated $66,586 of Polystar’s CPF contributions, while from April to September 2014 he misappropriated $35,908.18 in payments meant for suppliers.
When Arumugam received a call in August 2014 from the CPF Board informing him that Polystar had not paid its CPF contributions, Sivassankar gave his boss a forged letter from the CPF Board saying that the matter had been settled.
Arumugan eventually discovered the misappropriations when his company’s suppliers told him they had not been paid. He filed a police report on 5 November 2014 and Sivassankar was subsequently arrested and charged in court on 10 May 2016.
Sivassankar admitted during the police’s investigations that he had used the misappropriated money to “finance his own luxuries”, said the DPP.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul
Sivassankar’s offences did not end there, however. Within the same month of being charged, he began misappropriating money from his new workplace, SG Vehicles Global.
As a salesman at the car importer, Sivassankar was entrusted with deposits and payments made by customers for the bidding of Certificates of Entitlement (COEs) or license plate numbers. To avoid discovery, he would avoid recording the payments made to the company.
Between May and October 2016, Sivassankar funnelled $67,835 in payments made through either cash or bank transfers to his personal account by seven customers.
His actions came to light when a customer tried to collect a car that he had ordered and was told by SG Vehicles Global that the company had not received his payment. The customer filed a police report on 9 November 2016. Sivassankar has since made restitutions amounting to $8,325 to the customer.
According to the prosecution, Sivassankar had used the money to repay his debts, to pay for legal fees and his own expenses.
The prosecution, which asked for a jail sentence of at least 28 months, said that Sivassankar ought not to be treated as a first-time offender for the offence he committed at SG Vehicles Global, as he was out on bail at the time.
DPP Koh pointed out that the lengthy period over which Sivassankar had committed the offences indicated that the case was not a “momentary mistake or folly”. He added that the total amount Sivassankar misappropriated was very high and that minimal restitution had been made.
Sivassankar had also broken the trust of his employers and put the Polystar in breach of its legal obligations by misappropriating its CPF contributions.
Sivassankar’s lawyer Charlene Nah said in mitigation that her client’s actions in Polystar were prompted by his dissatisfaction with his salary, working hours and work responsibilities there.
Sivassankar was told that he didn’t need a salary increment as he was not married and had no family commitments, said Nah. He was paid $500 a month instead of his supposed $1,800 on some months, she said. “It is the non-payment of his salary which prompted his actions in the first place,” said Nah.
In response, District Judge Kenneth Yap noted that the sums that Sivassankar misappropriated were disproportionately high, while DPP Koh added that Sivassankar could have approached the Ministry of Manpower for his workplace issues.
For committing criminal breach of trust, Sivassankar could have been jailed up to 15 years, fined, or both, for each charge.
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