Woman who asked cop for information about ex-husband’s case avoids jail time on appeal

“It will not be feasible or productive in most cases to seek to rank different motives on some putative sliding scale of distastefulness,” she said.

The case involved Chan Zhiyao, who was then a senior investigation officer attached to the Special Victims Unit of Bedok Police Division.

In 2020, Chan was assigned to investigate a case of child abuse involving Tien and her then husband.

On Dec 9, 2020, Tien told Chan that her husband had stolen a mobile phone in 2016, and asked him to provide her with information on the investigations so that she could relay the information to her divorce lawyer.

Chan then conducted an unauthorised screening for Tien’s husband in a police database.

He obtained the police report number for the theft case, which he then sent to Tien over WhatsApp.

Tien and Chan later entered into a sexual relationship in May 2022.

The OSA offences came to light during an investigation into Chan over unrelated matters.

In her written grounds, Justice Chionh set out the sentencing approach for future cases of unauthorised receipt of confidential information, which carries a maximum $2,000 fine, a jail term of up to two years, or both.

She identified a list of factors to determine the level of harm caused and the level of the offender’s culpability.

They include the nature of information disclosed, the extent of actual harm caused, the offender’s role, and the duration of offending behaviour.

The number of factors in each case would determine the indicative sentencing range.

A case involving slight harm and low culpability would attract a fine or a short jail term, while a case involving high culpability and severe harm would attract a jail term from 1½ to two years.

The final sentence would be adjusted based on factors specific to each offender.

For the current case, Justice Chionh noted that both the prosecution and the defence had agreed that Tien’s offence involved slight harm and low culpability.

The woman, who was represented by Mr Chooi Jing Yen, sought a $1,500 fine, while the prosecution asked for the one-week jail term to be upheld.

Chan, then 44, was sentenced to a year and four months’ jail in April 2025. He had pleaded guilty to a charge under the OSA over disclosing information to Tien and an unrelated charge of criminal breach of trust.

Justice Chionh noted that the district judge who sentenced Tien had considered the issue of parity.

She disagreed that this was a case where the public would perceive that Chan had suffered injustice because he was given two months’ jail for the OSA charge when Tien was given a fine.

Justice Chionh pointed out that Chan had another charge under the Computer Misuse Act that was taken into consideration, had taken the initiative to access the police database, and had abused his position.

There was no doubt that the custodial threshold had been crossed, she said.

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