Former MUIS senior director gets jail for misappropriating funds meant for religious school
Razak Mohamed Lazim, 59, also accessed the email server of a religious school without permission after resigning from his position there.
by Ang Hwee Min · CNA · JoinRead a summary of this article on FAST.
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SINGAPORE: A former senior director of the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) was sentenced to seven weeks’ jail on Friday (Sep 18) for misappropriating more than S$68,000 (US$53,300) that was meant for a religious school he used to manage and for accessing its email server without permission after resigning from his position there.
Razak Mohamed Lazim, 59, managed Madrasah Irsyad Zuhri Al-Islamiah when he was employed with MUIS between 2011 to January 2016.
He received a discharge not amounting to an acquittal for two charges of allegedly cheating Temasek Foundation International of nearly S$785,000 and one charge of accessing the madrasah’s email server.
After he resigned from MUIS and left the madrasah, Razak was appointed as an executive director of Irsyad Trust Limited (ITL) from April 2016, making him one of the two required signatories of the company’s bank account. This allowed him to execute transactions.
The misappropriated funds related to arrangements for distributing and publishing textbooks developed by the madrasah.
To use the master copy of the textbooks, a publisher had paid S$205,888 to a company named Key-Orient Lamitec (KOL), which had signed a distribution agreement with the school. From these funds, KOL was supposed to pay S$116,671 to ITL, which it had also signed a distribution agreement with, as well as S$68,629 to the “copyright owner”, or the religious school.
This payment was made on Feb 4, 2020, and the next day, Razak requested that KOL transfer both ITL’s and the madrasah’s share of the royalties – totalling S$185,300 – to ITL, which would disburse it “directly”, court documents showed.
As a result, KOL sent the full sum to ITL’s bank account on Feb 7, 2020, thinking that ITL would transfer the S$68,629 to the religious school. But the money was eventually not transferred.
The prosecution asked for two to three months’ jail for Razak, while the defence argued for a fine of S$7,000.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Bryan Wong highlighted that the misappropriated amount was very high and that the funds belonged to a public body. He noted that Razak had returned S$70,000 to KOL.
He argued that there was a “considerable degree” of deliberation and premeditation by Razak, who intentionally created server instructions to forward a copy of all his work emails.
In the other charges taken into consideration, Razak admitted to instructing someone else to transfer two email addresses to ITL’s server, without informing them that he no longer worked for MUIS and was no longer on the school’s management committee, Mr Wong noted.
Razak’s lawyers Mr Aristotle Emmanuel Eng and Mr Andre Jumabhoy argued that Razak merely wanted to continue receiving work emails. As for the misappropriation charge, they claimed that failing to transfer the funds was an oversight on Razak's part, and that it was not a deliberate or premeditated offence.
Delivering her decision, District Judge Kamala Ponnampalam noted that the prosecution and the defence did not dispute that Razak was not authorised to access the madrasah’s email server and that no actual harm was caused.
She agreed that there was a persistence in Razak’s offences – he did not only reconfigure the server but also asked someone to migrate his email accounts.
Noting that the misappropriated funds technically belonged to MUIS, a public agency, the judge also rejected the defence’s argument that the issue arose because of an oversight by Razak.
The man was tasked by ITL’s board to disburse the S$70,000 to the religious school but he did not do so, the judge said, adding that she failed to see how Razak could have overlooked the matter when it had been brought up multiple times.
As a result, the religious school could not use the funds for two years, the judge said, noting that restitution was made even before investigations began
Razak will be appealing his sentence, his lawyers confirmed.
WHAT HAPPENED
Razak joined the religious school’s management committee in 2002 and served as its chairman from 2006 to 2008. He was the executive director of the school from 2009 to 2011 and also joined its board of governors in 2008.
While he was employed by MUIS, Razak continued to sit on the school’s management committee and board of governors, court documents showed.
In 2014, the religious school’s management committee decided it should move its international projects to ITL, a separate company established in 2006 by the management committee.
The public company was guaranteed by Razak and two other people. Following Razak's departure from MUIS and the religious school, he was appointed as one of ITL's executive directors. As one of two required signatories to the company's bank account, he was able to execute transactions.
The madrasah initially entered into a distribution agreement with KOL in 2017 – the religious school would receive royalty payments from the company and the company could enter into other arrangements to market and distribute the books, court documents showed.
In 2018, ITL entered into a distribution agreement with KOL to exclusively promote, market, advertise, sell and distribute the textbooks. Eventually, the agreement was that any royalty fees earned by KOL would be shared between the religious school, ITL and KOL.
In 2019, ITL referred a publisher, Cambridge University Press India, to KOL. The two companies signed a content license agreement, granting Cambridge the right to print and publish the textbook exclusively for the Maldives government for a content development fee paid to KOL.
In the third tranche of its payments for using the master copy of the textbooks, Cambridge paid S$205,888 to KOL. In turn, KOL was supposed to pay S$116,671 to ITL and S$68,629 to the religious school.
Instead, Razak requested that KOL transfer both ITL’s and the madrasah’s share of the royalties – totalling S$185,300 – to ITL, which would disburse it “directly”, court documents showed. KOL did so, and ITL eventually did not transfer the S$68,629 to the religious school.
About a week after the S$185,300 – inclusive of the amount owed to the religious school – was transferred to ITL, the company’s board of directors had a meeting on Feb 15, 2020, where Razak told the other directors that ITL had “made annual contributions of S$20,000 since 2017” to the school.
The board decided to “make a donation of S$70,000” to the madrasah, and the man was “tasked” to disburse the “donation”, court documents said.
He did not pay the religious school until Feb 22, 2022, when he prepared a cheque of S$70,000 issued by ITL, which included the S$68,629 owed to the madrasah.
On Mar 16, 2022, the religious school told ITL in a letter that it could not accept the “donation” due to an “ongoing review of the financial transactions” between the school and ITL.
On Jun 8 that year, Razak was called on by the Commercial Affairs Department to assist in investigations into his financial dealings with the religious school. About two weeks later, he transferred S$70,000 from ITL’s bank account to KOL’s, and requested an invoice, which stated that the payment was for “Adjustment to Agent Fee for Exploring Arabic”.
KOL and the religious school entered into a settlement agreement for the repayment of various items, including the S$70,000. So far, the company has paid S$41,600 to the religious school, but the last 10 monthly installments have been outstanding, according to court documents filed in July.
While he managed the madrasah, Razak was also given “super user” access rights to the school’s email server, which allowed him to access and configure all email accounts on the server.
In 2019, Razak used his access rights to create a new email account on the madrasah's server and set instructions so that anything sent to his old email address would also be sent to a personal email account.
Since he had already resigned from his position, the man did not have permission to access the email server or make the changes.
Razak admitted that he did not obtain permission from the principal, vice-principal or head of the madrasah department to make the changes, court documents showed.
The offence of accessing an email server without permission carries a maximum penalty of two years' jail, a fine of up to S$5,000, or both, for a first-time offender.
For misappropriating funds, Razak could have been jailed for up to two years, fined, or both.
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