Property purchases from 2007-2011 by civil servants in rail planning roles under review
The Singapore Government is reviewing property purchases by civil servants involved in rail planning to assess whether there was misconduct, said the Public Service Division (PSD) in a media release on Friday (25 Sept).
This comes after a research paper alleged that civil servants “disproportionately” purchased homes near planned but not yet publicly announced MRT stations.
Source: Richard L on Pexels
Relevant property purchases would have to be close to MRT stations
The review will encompass property purchases made between 2007 and 2011, which was the period covered in the paper, PSD said.
The purchases would have been made by officers working at agencies connected to rail planning and involved in such roles at the time.
The relevant properties would also have to be located close to MRT stations that were subsequently announced.
Civil servants who use non-public info for property purchases to face police action
But the Government needs time to retrieve records and examine the circumstances of each case as they took place “some time ago”, the statement said.
The case will be referred to the police if evidence is uncovered that an officer used non-public information to buy property for personal benefit.
PSD noted that officers are required to declare if they have access to non-public information that is possibly relevant to a proposed personal transaction.
This is applicable whether the transaction involves property, vehicles or financial instruments.
They can then proceed only after obtaining approval.
Source: PSD Singapore on Facebook
Study claims civil servants purchased property ‘disproportionately’ near MRT
The study concerned was published by the United States-based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) this month.
Titled “Do social norms substitute for enforcement? Evidence from public officials’ home purchases in Singapore”, it claimed that Singapore civil servants “disproportionately” bought homes near MRT stations that had been planned but not yet publicly announced.
The behaviour was particularly evident among “mid-level officials and agencies connected to rail planning” and also among relatives, it alleged.
It was also purportedly concentrated one to two years before the stations were publicly announced, but fell off after 2011.
The four authors behind the working paper were named as Tomasz Piskorski from Columbia University, Amit Seru and Chun Zhao from Stanford University, and Jian Zhang from the University of Hong Kong.
The authors also wrote that they “benefitted immensely” from discussions with University of Chicago economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Luigi Zingales, and Harvard University economists Jesse Shapiro and Li Shengwu, who is the nephew of Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Conclusions can’t be drawn just by statistical patterns alone: PSD
PSD said the Government takes the assertions “seriously” as the reported statistical patterns are a “concern”.
However, statistical patterns by themselves do not establish whether an officer had access to non-public information on MRT station locations at the relevant time, it noted.
Neither does it establish whether such information influenced a property purchase, it maintained, adding:
For example, information or speculation about planned MRT lines and stations may already be in the public domain or used to market new property developments. An officer may have purchased a unit in such a development for reasons unrelated to any non-public information.
While such possibilities do not remove the need for scrutiny, they underscore why each transaction must be examined “carefully” before drawing conclusions, PSD explained.
Conclusion must be based on evidence & facts: PSD
The Government expects all public officers to uphold the highest standards of integrity, PSD noted.
That’s why an investigation will be conducted and “appropriate action” taken if there are grounds to suspect an officer has misused non-public information for personal benefit.
But conclusions of wrongdoing must be based on evidence and the facts of each case, it concluded.
Have news you must share? Get in touch with us via email at news@mustsharenews.com.
Featured image adapted from Richard L on Pexels.
