On 16 July 2020, Angela Sim Seu Hoon, a 43-year-old Singapore citizen and director of ENCE Marketing Group Pte Ltd (formerly known as ROI Strategy Consultants Pte Ltd (“ROI”)), a public relations and marketing firm, was sentenced to 8 weeks’ imprisonment for cheating Enterprise Singapore (formerly known as SPRING Singapore) of $30,000 under the Innovation and Capability Voucher (“ICV”) scheme.
The ICV scheme was launched by then-SPRING Singapore in June 2012 to support Small and Medium Enterprises (“SMEs”) in their capability upgrading efforts. SMEs could apply for capability vouchers (capped at $5,000 each) to defray the costs of engaging service providers to provide approved capability upgrading services such as service diagnoses or productivity improvement projects.
Under the ICV scheme, only approved consultants from pre-qualified service providers can undertake capability upgrading projects for SMEs. Upon completion of the projects, the service provider had to submit documentation to then-SPRING Singapore as proof of the services rendered, to claim the subsidy.
ROI was an ICV scheme pre-qualified service provider. Between November 2012 and March 2013, ROI, under the instructions of Angela Sim Seu Hoon, submitted 12 ICV claims to then-SPRING Singapore on the basis that an approved consultant from ROI had performed capability upgrading services for 12 SMEs. These submissions were false, as the said consultant had not performed any of the services in the submitted claims. Then-SPRING Singapore had paid out $30,000 to ROI for six of these 12 ICV claims. These fraudulent claims were subsequently detected through audits conducted. The remaining six ICV claims were rejected upon detection of the fraud.
Angela Sim Seu Hoon pleaded guilty to three counts of cheating then-SPRING Singapore. Nine other similar cheating charges were taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing.
SINGAPORE POLICE FORCE
16 July 2020 @ 5:30 PM