Jensen La Vende

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee was grant­ed $1 mil­lion bail as the state pre­pares to lay an in­dict­ment against him and busi­ness­man Hugh Leong Poi.

The two, who did not ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mas­ter Lisa Singh-Phillip af­ter falling ill on Tues­day and re­main­ing hos­pi­talised to­day, are charged with con­spir­ing to de­fraud the State over the im­por­ta­tion of a $2 mil­lion Mer­cedes-Benz G63 AMG. The state al­leges that Lee false­ly claimed own­er­ship to ben­e­fit from par­lia­men­tary tax ex­emp­tions.

On April 7, 2025, Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles dis­missed all charges, rul­ing that pros­e­cu­tors had pre­sent­ed in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence af­ter Lee’s at­tor­neys suc­cess­ful­ly made a no-case sub­mis­sion.

Leong Poi was grant­ed $600,000 bail.

The men will be in­formed of their next court date af­ter the state files its case. They were re­ar­rest­ed on a bench war­rant, which means the mat­ter will not restart but will be called be­fore a High Court Judge for tri­al.

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day, the po­lice said the war­rants were filed by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions pur­suant to Sec­tion 23(5) of the In­dictable Of­fences (Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry) Act, Chap­ter 12:01.

Lee and Leong Poi are charged with con­spir­ing to de­prive the state of tax rev­enue re­lat­ed to the im­por­ta­tion of the Mer­cedes-Benz G63 AMG val­ued at over $2 mil­lion. The of­fences are al­leged to have oc­curred be­tween March 24 and June 8, 2019.

Lee is al­so ac­cused of false­ly claim­ing own­er­ship of the ve­hi­cle to claim tax ex­emp­tions. The tax­es in ques­tion in­clud­ed $293,094.02 in Val­ue Added Tax (VAT), $298,650 in mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax, and $824,548.62 in cus­toms du­ty.

As an MP, Lee is al­lowed pe­ri­od­ic tax ex­emp­tions for mo­tor ve­hi­cles but must pay the tax­es if he seeks to sell the ve­hi­cles with­in two years of claim­ing the ex­emp­tions.

The charges re­late to the pur­chase of a $2.3 mil­lion Mer­cedes-Benz and whether $1.4 mil­lion in tax ex­emp­tions may have ben­e­fit­ed a par­ty fi­nancier.