Khushwant Singh, Asia News Network (The Straits Times), Singapore | Business | Sat, June 23 2012, 11:50 AM
A former manager of an electronics company pleaded guilty to accepting nearly S$3.3 million (US$2.58 million) in kickbacks on Friday.
Pheh Boon Leng, 46, committed the 19 offences over two years, starting in January 2003 while he was a manager at Sony Electronics Asia Pacific.
He continued after he was promoted to senior manager in July 2004. The last kickback he received was on Sept. 9, 2004.
He was dismissed in November 2006 for the unauthorized selling of the company's products and is now unemployed.
The court heard that Sony's policy here was that employees could sell only to other Sony companies in the Asia-Pacific region.
In countries where Sony did not have a presence, sales had to be to the country's authorized distributors.
In Indonesia, that was PT Galva Technovision. However, Pheh struck a deal in November 2002 with two Indonesians to sell Sony media products at below cost price to their companies, without his bosses' knowledge.
The Indonesian buyers were a Acing, who goes by only one name and who owns Kencana Jaya, and Agus Handaja who owns PD Yanco. Both firms are in the business of buying and selling recording media products.
The deal was for them to pay 10 percent of the total sales value of each shipment to Pheh.
The court heard the Singaporean also earned bigger bonuses from his company by boosting his sales figures.
Pheh concealed the paper trail for the parallel export scheme by sending the invoices for the goods to Marc Van Agten, the national sales and marketing manager of Sony Australia and New Zealand.
The invoices were then forwarded to an Australian dealer, who then passed them to the two Indonesian companies.
The kickbacks arrived mainly through telegraphic transfers but a few times via a middleman named Eddy.
Pheh cried when he said in court on Friday that he realized he had done wrong and was very remorseful for bringing embarrassment to his family.
He asked the court for a lenient sentence and promised that he would be a good citizen.
His wife and mother, who were in court, also started crying.
He will be sentenced next Friday, as the prosecution wanted time to prepare arguments for a deterrent sentence.
Pheh faces a maximum of five-year jail term and a fine of up to S$100,000 on each of the eight counts of corruption.
The other 11 eleven offences will be taken into consideration in sentencing.
The whereabouts of Van Agten and the two Indonesians are unknown. (mtq)
