Indian-origin man employed in Singapore govt jailed for obtaining salary information of colleagues

A 35-year-old Indian origin officer with Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower was jailed for five weeks on Thursday for having asked an ex-colleague from DBS Bank to access the salary information of his colleagues, according to a media report.

Dinath Silvamany Muthaliyar, a Singapore citizen, who asked his former colleague Liong Yan Sin at DBS bank to access the profiles in the database containing information about customers, pleaded guilty to four counts under the Computer Misuse Act, Channel News Asia reported.

Liong had access to the details due to his job as a collections officer, where he attended to queries by bank customers, and spoke to them about outstanding payments and payment plans.

However, Liong was not supposed to disclose or access information outside of the parameters of his duties.

Dinath, too, was a collections officer before joining the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), where he was a levy administration manager.

In June 2018, Dinath asked Liong to help him find out the salary details of colleagues at MOM so that he could compare them with his own.

"The accused wanted to find out his colleagues' salaries to ascertain his standing in respect of his salary and the difference between his salary and his colleagues' salaries," the prosecution said.

Liong agreed and accessed the DBS database to conduct searches between June 2018 and November 2018.

He then disclosed the information to Dinath via WhatsApp. Across all the charges, at least seven colleagues were affected.

The prosecution sought six to seven weeks in jail for Dinath, stating that the culpability of the accused was lower than Liong, as the latter had been in a position of trust when he committed the offence.

Dinath pleaded guilty to four counts under the Computer Misuse Act for abetting Liong to conduct the unauthorised searches and four counts under the Banking Act for abetting Liong to disclose information that he was not authorised to.

Another 14 charges of a similar nature were considered for his sentencing, the report said.

The court heard that both Liong and Dinath had been aware of the rules prohibiting collections officers from disclosing customer information to third parties in an unauthorised manner and that they were not allowed to access customer information outside of their job scope.

Liong had earlier pleaded guilty to similar charges and was sentenced to 16 weeks in jail. Another man, Ang Kok How, who had also asked Liong to illegally obtain an acquaintance's address, was sentenced to two weeks in jail.