Lian Hoe Heng v PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

Facts

Lian Hoe Heng worked from 2020 for a Malaysia-based drug syndicate run by a man known as Kadi, relaying customers' orders, directing runners and customers to drop-off points in Singapore and arranging transfers of drug proceeds. He was repatriated to Singapore on 16 April 2023. In Criminal Case No 65 of 2024 he pleaded guilty at the earliest stage to five charges: abetting Tan Guosheng's possession of not less than 249.99g of methamphetamine for trafficking, and four money laundering charges under the CDSA involving $160,000, $103,300, $714,180 and $101,700. Eighteen other charges were taken into consideration. Applying discounts for the guilty plea under the Sentencing Advisory Panel's guidelines, the High Court judge imposed 25 years and seven months for the drug charge and shorter terms for the laundering charges, running the 1st and 11th charges consecutively for a global term of 28 years and nine months.

Lian appealed in Criminal Appeal No 1 of 2025, claiming among other things that his counsel below, Mr Choo Si Sen, had promised a global sentence of 23 years and one month and had not shown him the statement of facts or the mitigation plea in time. Mr Choo denied this on affidavit. The court appointed Ms Sadhana Rai as independent counsel to address whether such allegations could affect sentence, after which Lian purported to withdraw them.

Issues

1. Whether the appellant's allegations of inadequate legal assistance against his former counsel were baseless
2. Whether, and how, baseless allegations made in bad faith on appeal may lead to an enhanced sentence
3. Whether the sentencing framework in Huang Ying-Chun governs all the money laundering charges under the CDSA
4. Whether the individual and aggregate sentences were wrong in principle or manifestly inadequate

Holding

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and enhanced the sentences: 27 years' imprisonment for the 1st charge and 84 months for the 11th charge, both consecutive, with concurrent terms of 77 months for the 6th charge and 66 months each for the 8th and 13th charges. The global sentence was enhanced to 34 years' imprisonment.

Reasoning

The court found the allegations a fabrication. They were specific factual claims, refuted by Mr Choo's account of prison visits at which he read the draft documents to Lian, who had raised no complaint before the judge. His later version, that Mr Choo had said he would try to get a particular sentence, contradicted the claim of a broken promise, and the retraction came only after independent counsel recommended enhancement, with no apology.

Baseless allegations made in bad faith are an abuse of process, as in BLV v Public Prosecutor [2019] 2 SLR 726, and may justify enhancing a sentence even without a prosecution appeal, provided the appellant has notice. The court set out two steps applied in sequence: first, reducing or removing the guilty-plea discount, because such conduct wastes resources and undercuts the remorse the discount presumes; second, if the whole discount is removed and that is not enough, treating lack of remorse as an aggravating factor. Neither step involves double counting. Here the whole discount was revoked, any remaining value of the plea being set off against Lian's lack of remorse, and no further uplift was made.

Independently, the sentences were wrong in principle or manifestly inadequate. For the drug charge, the judge had made no uplift from 28 years and six months despite Lian's central coordinating role, his substantial profit and nine drug-related charges taken into consideration; 30 years was appropriate. For the laundering charges, the court held that the harm-culpability framework in Huang Ying-Chun applies to offences under ss 43(1) and 46(1) of the CDSA, overruled decisions relying on the ranges in Ho Man Yuk, and rated Lian's culpability high, arriving at 77, 66, 110 and 66 months after a 10% uplift for the laundering charges taken into consideration.

Running the 1st and 11th charges consecutively produced 39 years and two months, which the court regarded as crushing. Applying the totality principle, it reduced those two sentences to 27 years and 84 months, giving 34 years, a term it considered proportionate to Lian's role, the scale of the laundering and his conduct on appeal.

From the judgment