SINGAPORE: The government is reviewing property purchases made between 2007 and 2011 by officers involved in rail planning to assess if there was “actual misconduct”, after a working paper alleged “informed trading by civil servants” who “disproportionately” bought homes near unannounced MRT stations.
The Public Service Division (PSD) said on Friday (Sep 25) that the statistical patterns in the paper were concerning, but “do not by themselves establish whether any individual officer actually had access to non-public information on MRT station locations at the relevant time, or whether such information influenced a property purchase”.
“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,” PSD said in a media release.
“An officer may have purchased a unit in such a development for reasons unrelated to any non-public information. These possibilities do not remove the need for scrutiny, but underscore why each transaction must be examined carefully before any conclusion is drawn.”
The review will cover property purchases between 2007 and 2011, which is the period highlighted in the paper, and where the properties were close to locations subsequently announced as MRT stations.
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