Indictment

On 18 January 2000, an ad-hoc internal audit was conducted on the crew allowance payments at Singapore Airlines (SIA), and it detected three UOB bank accounts receiving ten payments each on 15 December 1999. It was unusual as there was supposed to be one payment made per crew member on that day, and the bank accounts were under the name of Teo Cheng Kiat. This suspicious error prompted a report to the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD), who arrested Teo on the same day the detection was made.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Teo was later charged with 26 criminal counts - which consisted of 25 counts of criminal breach of trust and one single charge of corruption. The investigations eventually revealed that Teo had misappropriated a total amount of $35 million, instead of the $2 million as what the SIA initially perceived when they made the complaint to CAD. During the investigations, the police were only able to recover $15 million, but subsequently, Teo decided to surrender his remaining properties back to SIA, which amounted to $6 million; the remaining $14 million were never recovered despite the efforts by the police. Aside from this, Teo was cooperative from the time he was arrested and gave every information he had about his crimes over these 13 years.^{[12][13][14][15]}

Guilty plea and submissions

In his trial at the High Court of Singapore five months later, on 19 June 2000, Teo Cheng Kiat pleaded guilty to ten charges of criminal breach of trust, and had the remaining 16 charges taken into consideration during sentencing. Each charge of criminal breach of trust carries the maximum penalty of seven years' imprisonment.^[16]

The prosecution, consisting of former CAD director Lawrence Ang and his colleague Jeanne Lee from the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC), submitted that the mitigating factors behind Teo's case were scant, as the misappropriation of money took place daily over a long period of 13 years and the amount he took was massive. They argued that Teo spent a majority of the misappropriated funds on an expensive and high-quality lifestyle, and may have hidden some of the stolen fortune for future spending in the later part of his life. His actions were premeditated and deliberate, and he was in a position of trust and had betrayed the confidence of his employers and his superiors for 13 years. His plea of guilt was only submitted in view of overwhelming evidence and in summary, they sought a deterrent and severe sentence for Teo.

As for the defence, Teo's lawyer Kevin De Souza submitted a mitigation plea that Teo committed the offences out of dissatisfaction towards his employers who looked down on him due to his educational background, and this caused him to not be able to get a promotion to a managerial position despite his diligence, knowledge and efficiency in the job, and they never considered his opinion in rectifying the discovered flaws of the payment system.

These factors resulted into bitterness and anger that led to Teo's criminal spree, and greed later took over his cloud of judgement. He also claimed that he felt sorry towards his wife for manipulating her regarding the bank account and wealth they obtained, as well as towards his superiors for the financial losses suffered by SIA. His status as a first-time offender and timely plea of guilt, in addition to the full cooperation with the authorities were also cited as mitigating factors of the case.^[17]

Sentence

On 30 June 2000, the trial judge, Judicial Commissioner (JC) Tay Yong Kwang of the High Court decided to sentence 47-year-old Teo Cheng Kiat to a total of 24 years’ imprisonment.

Explaining why he meted out a 24-year sentence, JC Tay stated that while Teo's plea of guilt saved the court's time and expense, Teo only did so in front of overwhelming amounts of evidence, in contrast to the guilty pleas made in certain cases of crimes that were difficult to prove. His capture did not result from a voluntary surrender and remorse, but it was due to his criminal conduct being discovered out of luck and coincidence. Hence, the guilty plea carried little weight. Although it was his first conviction, Teo has earned it through a dramatical magnitude of his crime.

JC Tay also stated that the daily misappropriation of money took place in a systematic and sophisticated manner, and under a cleverly-hatched concealment, it took place steadily over a long period of time, which serves as an aggravating factor of the case. The judge also pointed out that even if Teo did commit the first few crimes back in 1987 out of anger towards his employers as what he claimed, this has already became a poor excuse for Teo in his subsequent crimes as these crimes were motivated solely by his increasing greed, and Teo used the criminal proceeds to provide himself an extravagant lifestyle and spent them on expensive goods more than what many honest and law-abiding citizens would earn in their lives.

For these reasons, JC Tay declared that Teo should be severely punished for what he did, and stated that a lengthy sentence is necessary to make Teo, who became “intoxicated” with greed, to become sober again. Hence, JC Tay meted out a six-year prison sentence for each of the ten convicted charges. Of these ten prison sentences meted out, four of the terms were to be served consecutively while the remaining six were to be served concurrently.

In total, Teo was to serve 24 years in prison, with effect from the date of his arrest, though the sentence may possibly be reduced by one-third due to good behaviour.^[18][19]