Indian-origin ex-prison officer jailed for trying to obtain bribes from Singapore prisoner

SINGAPORE: A 57-year-old Indian-origin retired prison officer in Singapore was sentenced to three years and two weeks of jail term on Friday for attempting to obtain a bribe of 133,000 Singaporean dollars from an inmate while he was in service, according to a media report. Kobi Krishna Ayavoo, who served as the senior chief warder, was convicted under eight charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act in November 2023, The Straits Times newspaper reported.

"He was convicted last November. However, the sentencing was announced on Friday. He tried to obtain a bribe of 133,000 SGD from an inmate. He has been sentenced to a jail term of 3 years and two weeks," said the report.

During the trial, the judge also found him guilty of two charges under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act as Kobi had instigated two of his then-colleagues to make unauthorised access to their workplace computer platform - the Prisons Operations and Rehabilitation System (Ports) - in July 2017.

Kobi, who was suspended from work from July 2017, retired in December 2022.

In the graft-related offences, Kobi had attempted to obtain a bribe from Chong Keng Chye, then 48, who was behind bars at the time for one of the worst child abuse cases in Singapore.

He had battered his girlfriend's seven-year-old son for more than seven months until the child died in 1999.

He also abused the boy's two sisters.

In 2005, Chong was sentenced to 20 years of preventive detention, with nine strokes of the cane.

In preventive detention, a repeat offender aged over 30 receives a substantial period of imprisonment to protect the public. The detention order can last up to 20 years.

In her submissions, Deputy Public Prosecutor Magdalene Huang said that Kobi had tried to obtain bribes from Chong on eight separate occasions between September 2015 and March 2016, in exchange for facilitating the inmate's request to transfer out of an area named Cluster A1 in Changi Prison.

On each occasion, Kobi tried to obtain between SGD 3,000 and SGD 42,000 from Chong, who did not hand him any money.

DPP Huang told the court that Chong was a credible witness, stressing that he had recorded the eight occasions on which Kobi attempted to obtain bribes from him.