What laws or rules apply to civil servants when using information obtained from work?

SINGAPORE – Questions about the laws and rules governing what civil servants can do with information obtained through their work have surfaced recently.

They come after a study claiming they and their relatives disproportionately bought homes near MRT stations that had not yet been publicly announced.

The Public Service Division (PSD) said in its initial response to the paper that it is reviewing the data and methodology and would refer the matter to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) if there is “material basis” to do so.

Current rules include annual declarations.

Civil servants have to make declarations of interests in investments and properties to their head of agency every year, as well as when they acquire significant assets, according to a 2024 written parliamentary reply by current Coordinating Minister for Public Services Chan Chun Sing.

ST understands that these declarations could include private residential property, commercial property or any land in Singapore or abroad. The rules could also apply to properties acquired by the public officer’s spouse or financially dependent children.

There are also rules stating that officers are not allowed to use privileged information, including information that has not been made public, when buying property for personal gain.

In 2023, then senior minister Teo Chee Hean told Parliament that the Public Service Code of Conduct requires all public officers to take an annual quiz and make declarations including their freedom from financial embarrassment, investments in non-owner-occupied properties and investments in private firms.

He said officers must also make ad hoc declarations when they buy private residential or commercial properties or land.

National University of Singapore corporate governance expert Mak Yuen Teen said the Government should recognise that there are always risks of abuse, regardless of the merits of the working paper.

Pointing to a recent court case involving a former Housing Board group director accused of breaching the agency’s database, he said the episode illustrated the need for safeguards.

“Regardless of whether we believe the findings are accurate, we should make sure we have safeguards to minimise such risks,” he said.

Legislation, codes of conduct that may apply

Some have assumed that the mention of CPIB means that any potential offence highlighted by the study is corruption-related, but lawyers told The Straits Times that the legal implications depend heavily on the circumstances of each case.

Noting that the study does not provide any specific facts for any individuals, lawyers suggested several possible pieces of legislation that could be relevant beyond the Prevention of Corruption Act, as well as internal codes of conduct by which civil servants are bound.

The CPIB is the only agency authorised to investigate corruption offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), which covers corrupt transactions involving “gratification” – such as money, property, services, favours or other advantages – given or received to induce a person to do something with corrupt intent.

But lawyers said the fact that a civil servant may have used information obtained through work to make a profitable property purchase does not, by itself, establish a corruption offence.

The working paper, authored by four academics based in the US and Hong Kong, claimed that civil servants – in particular those involved in rail planning – disproportionately bought private property near an MRT station, compared with a control group with similar demographics.

It was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a US-based non-profit organisation, in September.

Lawyer Gino Singh of Abbots Chambers said the PCA is not an obvious fit based on these facts.

The conventional corruption offences under the Act require corrupt gratification operating as an inducement or reward, he noted. “Here, nobody has offered or given the officer anything. He has simply acted upon information already in his possession,” he said.

Benjamin Joshua Ong, an assistant professor of law at Singapore Management University, said merely misusing information for personal gain is not necessarily an offence that the CPIB has the power to investigate.

“The CPIB’s main remit is to investigate corruption-related offences. It does have the power to investigate other offences, but only arrestable offences which are disclosed in the course of investigations into corruption-related offences,” he told ST.

Professor Walter Woon, a former Attorney-General, said investigations can be conducted by any agency, and CPIB investigations often lead to Penal Code charges.

“What charge might be disclosed is an entirely separate matter. It may not be corruption, but there could be other offences,” he said.

Instead of the PCA, lawyers flagged Section 169 of the Penal Code and Section 7(3) of the Public Sector (Governance) Act as possibilities.

Section 169 of the Penal Code states that it is an offence for a public servant who is legally prohibited from buying or bidding for certain property to nonetheless do so. If convicted, a person can be jailed for up to two years, fined, or both, while the property, if purchased, is liable to be confiscated.

Ong said whether this applies depends on whether the civil servant in question was legally bound not to purchase the property, which could come under internal civil service rules that employees are contractually bound to follow.

Section 7(3) states that it is an offence for a relevant public official to use information under the control of a public sector agency and, as a result of that use, obtain a gain for himself or another person, or cause harm or loss to another person. A person can be fined up to $5,000, jailed for up to two years, or both, under this provision.

Lawyers ST spoke to said this Act could be more directly relevant to a scenario involving the use of government information for a private property gain.

But Ong noted that there appear to be no decided cases in which the courts have had an occasion to deal with or interpret Section 7(3), or any other part of the Public Sector (Governance) Act.

Therein lies a possible defence for the civil servant, which is to prove that the information used was “generally available information”, he said.

Ong said this could cover a possibility raised in several online comments so far – that future MRT stations may be reasonably inferred from the type of construction works being carried out in an area.

Singh said the Official Secrets Act could come into play if an officer told relatives to buy property based on internal knowledge of where an MRT station is going to be announced.

“That is no longer merely an officer privately acting upon information. There has been a communication of official information to another person,” he said.

There is a possibility that any wrong behaviour flagged in the study would not fall under the purview of the law but under internal civil service rules, said lawyers.

Singh said a breach of an employment or ethical obligation should not automatically be equated with the commission of a criminal offence.

Ong added that not all the standards explicitly list behaviours that are forbidden. Some take the form of principles and values, which involve an element of judgment.

For example, one of the core principles outlined in the Public Service Code of Conduct is for public officers to be “fair and impartial in carrying out responsibilities, and not be corrupt or seen to be so”.

They may also vary in stringency depending on the department.

Ong pointed to rules requiring all public officers to declare visits to local casinos if they visit more than four times a month or purchase an annual pass, while tighter restrictions apply to certain groups of officers.

ST has contacted the PSD and several government agencies involved in transport and land-use planning, including the Land Transport Authority and Urban Redevelopment Authority, for more details on the rules governing property purchases.