Whistle-blower coach sentenced to a week’s jail for role in falsifying race records

SINGAPORE – A former national fin swimming team coach has been sentenced to a week’s jail after pleading guilty to engaging in a conspiracy to falsify race results of athletes at an overseas fin swimming event.

Muhammad Faiz Suhaimi, 33, had first pleaded guilty on Aug 26 to falsifying the competition results of an overseas event, which were later used to support the nomination of six athletes for selection to represent Singapore in the 2023 SEA Games held in Phnom Penh.

Fin swimming is a sport in which athletes swim on the water’s surface or underwater while wearing fins on their feet.

Delivering the sentence on Sept 14, District Judge Ong Luan Tze said that while he applauded Faiz’s courage in voluntarily disclosing the offences – a short custodial term would still be required.

This comes after both the prosecution and defence agreed that a stiff fine was sufficient in Faiz’s case, noting that the case was discovered only because of his whistle-blowing.

Said the judge: “I agree that substantial mitigating weight ought to be given to this factor. First, it demonstrates genuine remorse. Second, there is clearly public interest in encouraging people to step forward and own up to their offending.

“However, the weight to be attributed to this must be balanced against the severity of the offending, and the public interest in deterring such offences from arising in the first place.”

The court had previously heard that Faiz was a team manager and fin swimming coach at the Singapore Underwater Federation, working under the vice-president and head coach Ho Ho Huat, 56, at the time.

The scheme started in December 2022, after Ho found out some fin swimming events had been removed from the 2023 SEA Games. This meant some of the athletes he wanted to select would not be eligible, including his daughter.

Ho wanted to nominate more athletes to be sent to the games through the appeal process but knew that he needed the athletes to have qualifying results in a sanctioned competition to do so.

After finding out that there was a competition being held in Malaysia in January 2023, Ho decided to send five male athletes to participate.

Both Ho and Faiz attended the competition together and knew that the athletes they had sent did not participate in the 4x200m relay surface event.

A few days after the Malaysian competition, Ho brought up the idea of falsifying the results of the event to Faiz, who was hesitant but eventually relented.

The defence argued that Faiz had done so as Ho was more senior than him, and he was afraid to question him. On Jan 18, 2023, Faiz used computer software to make false electronic records for the results of the Malaysian competition.

As a result of the falsified records, six athletes – who would have otherwise not been selected to represent Singapore – were chosen to go to the SEA Games.

The Singapore National Olympic Council incurred an additional expense of $15,691.15 to send the six athletes to the competition.

Faiz informed an anonymous whistle-blower of the scheme in January 2024, after Ho was removed from the Singapore Underwater Federation in December 2023.

Ho’s case has been fixed for a pre-trial conference for Oct 1.

Said the judge: “To don the Singapore colours at an international sporting event like the SEA Games is the dream of countless aspiring athletes... We owe it to those athletes and to the spirit of sport itself to ensure that the pathway to national representation is governed by nothing other than honest assessment and scrupulously accurate results.”