By Chew Xiang

LAW Minister K Shanmugam yesterday spoke of Singapore's experience in fighting corruption at a seminar to discuss governance and anti-corruption measures in the region.

The conference was organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) and was attended by about 250 delegates, the organisers said.

In a keynote address, Mr Shanmugam, who is also Second Minister for Home Affairs, called corruption a 'cancer that has been eating away at many societies in the world'.

He said that Singapore has largely succeeded in keeping it out by enforcing tough laws, creating a culture of integrity, and paying government officials good salaries.

He also pointed to Singapore's record in enforcing the law even among those in high positions.

For instance, Choy Hon Tim, a senior civil servant at the Public Utilities Board, was investigated in 1995 and subsequently convicted of taking almost $14 million in bribes.

Others include Teh Cheang Wan, former minister for national development, who was investigated for allegedly accepting $1 million in bribes and who, maintaining his innocence to the very end, committed suicide before he was formally charged.

Taking questions later from the audience, Mr Shanmugam said that paying higher salaries to public officials was cheaper in the long run compared to the costs of corruption.

He was responding to a question from a member of a Philippine anti-corruption agency, who said that with corruption siphoning off a fifth of government budgets, there was no money for bigger salaries, creating a chicken-and-egg problem.

Mr Shanmugam also said that the Singapore police force is creating a special unit to investigate casino-linked crimes.

Yesterday, 17 companies and organisations signed a pledge at the conference to commit to clean business practices, among them OCBC Bank, Siemens and Sembcorp Industries.

Siemens was recently caught up in a billion-dollar worldwide bribery scandal which claimed the jobs of a number of senior executives and cost it a one billion euro (S$2 billion) fine, but it has since appointed a former German finance minister as an independent compliance monitor.

At a closed door session on Monday, delegates also discussed the issue of keeping corruption at bay at a time when governments are spending billions to boost their economies.

This article was first published in The Business Times.