SINGAPORE, April 22 — Two officers from site developer JTC Corporation as well as a consultancy firm employee were hauled to court on Friday (April 22) and charged with various offences in relation to the excessive clearing of a forest parcel in Kranji.

This comes about a month after an announcement that police investigations into the clearing, which happened in 2020, revealed that two JTC officers had given “inaccurate information" to their superiors.

The case involves a 25ha site in Kranji, which was set aside for the development of the Agri-Food Innovation Park. It is part of the 500ha Sungei Kadut Eco-District. 

The tree clearing which happened without approval from the National Parks Board (NParks) involves over 7.3ha of the plot, out of the 11.9ha that had been cleared. Another 13.1ha of greenery is still undeveloped and all site works had stopped.

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The matter came to light after a member of the public published a set of photographs on Facebook last year showing a before-and-after aerial comparison of the parcel of land.

Education Minister Chan Chun Sing, who was Minister for Trade and Industry at the time of the incident, told Parliament last month that the “inaccurate information” provided by the JTC officers was conveyed to the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

This led to him presenting inaccurate statements in a Parliament sitting in February last year.

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In the wake of the forest clearing, JTC also released a detailed timeline of the works. It then said that trees were erroneously cleared before the completion of a biodiversity baseline study and an environmental monitoring and management plan.

THE CRIMINAL CHARGES

The three individuals charged on Friday were:

•           Chong Pui Chih, deputy director at JTC, aged 46

•           Neo Jek Lin, senior project manager at JTC, aged 44

•           Tan See Chee, a qualified person and superintending officer of the contracts at CPG Consultants, aged 64

A fourth CPG Consultants employee, Jimmy Liu Wing Tim, was also set to be charged but did not turn up in court after recently undergoing an operation in hospital. The 62-year-old is a superintending officer’s representative.

Neo faces the most charges — eight — in total, while Chong faces seven and Tan faces five.

They were all handed five counts each under the Parks and Trees Act of conspiring with one another to cut trees with a girth exceeding one metre on vacant land without approval from the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation.

Because of that, JTC’s contractor, Huationg Contractor, then cut down 362 such trees before Jan 13 last year.

Neo and Chong were also charged under the same Act with two counts of making false documents to obtain approval from the Commissioner.

Neo allegedly drafted and sent an email to an NParks officer on Nov 3, 2020 to seek approval for clearance works at the site. However, clearance works had already begun, court documents stated.

Chong also allegedly drafted a similar email seeking approval from NParks on Nov 19 that year.

On Jan 12 last year, Neo and Chong then purportedly created and presented a PowerPoint presentation to an NParks officer, in order to similarly seek approval for clearance works at the site “concurrently while a fauna baseline study was conducted”, court documents showed.

Neo is further accused of instructing Liu to send an email to an NParks officer on Sept 25, 2020.

The email is said to have contained a schedule for clearance works at the site, and was in response to an email from NParks about three weeks ago requesting information on the state of clearance works.

The email that Neo told Liu to send allegedly stated that clearance works had only commenced on a certain plot of the site.

Neo purportedly knew that clearance works had already been on other plots of the site without the implementation of any wildlife-related measures.

This supposedly prevented the Director-General of Wildlife Management from exercising his powers under the Wildlife Act to stop works at the site, court documents showed.

All three cases, as well as Liu’s, were adjourned to May 23.

Those convicted of cutting trees above one metre girth, which are growing on vacant land or a tree conservation area, without approval can be fined up to S$50,000.

Those convicted of producing false documents to obtain approval from the Commissioner can be fined up to S$30,000.

If convicted under the Wildlife Act of hindering the Director-General, Neo could be jailed for up to 12 months or fined up to S$10,000, or punished with both. — TODAY