what's so shocking? It happened very often in Ireland , greece, spain, italy, almost all of europe and USA last few years when property prices escalate due to irrational greedy developers , real estate agents and mass media and newspapers who keeps spinning positive false news and fairy tales that prices would go up and up and then suddenly when prices crash , this is what happens (like in Europe and US now fire sale is so very common, that for the price of a COE in singapore you can buy an apartment there now!!!!). those stupid people who buy are also equally to be blame.
They should show make it compulsory to for banks to show these movie clips to all buyers before they sign. being old is NOT an excuse as it does not mean you are immune to taxes, debts or stupidity. I have seen alot of old arrogant stupid people who like to how lian and buy big cars and houses but cow beh and cow bu when the repo man comes knocking. these people are deadwood to society.
It would happen in singapore very soon. same for car prices. it is a bubble going to burst. even in China it has burst, just that the garmen there has put a gag on the news and that's why BoXil@i wife is hurriedly getting all her money and cash out of China secretly. Tells you alot when even the top people in China knows something about the state of economy not published in the media and do not even trust their own country or economy!!!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=9SdAHr1AWUs

SINGAPORE: A former security consultant was jailed four months on Tuesday for having sex with an underaged Vietnamese prostitute.

49-year-old Winson Chan Swee Teck was found guilty of paying the girl S$100 for her sexual services.

The girl, who is now 17 years old, cannot be named to protect her identity.

Chan is one of three men who were earlier charged for having commerical sex with the same girl.

Chan, who is divorced, had sex with her at a hotel at Lorong 28 Geylang in July 2011. This was after the girl lied that she was 20 years old and refused to show him her passport.

The first of the trio to be sentenced for the offence was a former land and estate executive with the Singapore Land Authority.

57-year-old Kum Chin Tiong, was sentenced to nine months jail in January after he pleaded guilty to paying S$100 for sex with the girl.

A third man, 55-year-old Yeo Joo Meng, a store personnel, also allegedly paid the girl between S$100 and S$130 for her sexual services.

It is an offence to pay for sex with a person under 18 years of age. If convicted, they could be jailed for up to seven years and fined.

In an interview with the media, prominent criminal lawyer Subhas Anandan who is acting for 10 of the men being charged pointed out bluntly that the girl does not deserve any protection under the law:
“How is anybody going to know what he is charged for when you don’t know who the girl is, and what her age is? Who are they trying to protect? As far as I am concerned, this girl does not deserve protection as she is a HARDCORE PROSTITUTE who got so many men into trouble”
However Young PAP Chairman and MP Teo Ser Luck disagrees.
Speaking to queries from the media, Mr Teo said:
“No matter what she did, she is still young. Exposing her identity in the media will not do anybody any good.”
His views were supported by another fellow MP Halimah Yacob who opined her future should be safe-guarded:
“Everyone deserves a chance to repent. The most important thing is, she should receive proper counseling in the future to prevent her from prostituting herself again.”
Despite her well intentions, it is highly unlikely that she will receive any ‘counseling’ in the first place because she is not charged for any offences and the authorities have no right to compel her to attend any counseling session unlike other juvenile offenders.
As she is 18 years old now, it remains to be seen if she will continue selling her body for easy and quick cash after this fiasco which only punishes her clients and allows her to get away without paying a price for it.

The Singapore Inter-agency Taskforce on trafficking in persons has released a detailed response to a recent United States report on human trafficking.

The five-page response - which reiterates and points out new "inaccuracies and misrepresentations" in the US State Department's latest annual report on human trafficking, released in June - was sent to the US yesterday.

The report claims, among other things, that forced labour on fishing vessels has been found to have originated from Singapore, and that no trafficking victims were offered medical and other services at shelters in the past year.

The report also stated that Singapore has not made proactive efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts.

The taskforce, which includes representatives from the Singapore Police Force and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority and is co-chaired by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Manpower (MOM), has refuted the claims.

In its response, the taskforce said that the US report's claim that the Government did not make proactive efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts here was not true.

Pointing out that Singapore has criminalised various commercial sex activities, the taskforce said that it conducted 3,608 anti-commercial sex operations last year that led to the arrests of 94 commercial sex agents or pimps.

Also inaccurate were claims that there were 'no criminal prosecutions or convictions of employers or employment agencies which withheld passports of foreign workers' last year.

The taskforce said that MOM had revoked the licences of three employment agencies, forfeited their security deposits, and prosecuted them in court for withholding workers' passports.

Also "unsubstantiated" was the suggestion that the authorities delayed the publication of independent research conducted on sex trafficking, said the taskforce.

It called on the US State Department, which produces the report, to substantiate the claim.

Reiterating the Republic's serious view on human trafficking, the taskforce called on the US to improve the credibility of its report.

The report is a tool that the US government uses to engage other countries in dialogue to advance anti-trafficking reforms. It also places each country into one of three tiers based on the extent of its government's efforts to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

The report put Singapore on a human-trafficking watch list last year, but has since moved it out of the watch list and up to Tier 2. Tier 1 is the highest ranking and includes countries such as Australia and Finland. Countries such as Algeria and Papua New Guinea have been grouped in Tier 3.

Yesterday's response was the taskforce's second since the report was released.

Last month, it also clarified the inaccuracies with US Ambassador-at-Large for human trafficking matters, Mr Luis CdeBaca, who was in Singapore to attend a related conference

HE CLAIMED he asked the prostitute and her pimp if she was 18 - the legal age to offer sex for money.

Rodney Sim Hang Nge, 61, told the court yesterday that the pimp and the girl confirmed that.

He asked the pimp that question as he was aware it was a crime to engage in paid sex with a person under the age of 18.

The law came into effect in February last year.

Sim, a senior accountant and father of two, told District Judge Jeffrey Sim: 'That question (about her age) is as sure as the sun rises in the east because it was only two sentences in Mandarin.'

But the pimp, Wang Minjiang, 37, said he told Sim that the girl was only 17.

On 15 Dec last year, Sim pleaded guilty to having sex with the girl twice - 3 Aug and 5 Aug last year - when she was only 16 years old.

We are not identifying her as she is a minor.

Sim's lawyer, Mr Shashi Nathan, had already prepared and submitted his client's mitigation plea and he was supposed to be sentenced yesterday.

But there was a dispute over some facts in the mitigation plea, including that concerning Sim's queries about the prostitute's age, and a Newton hearing was held yesterday instead. This is a hearing held to resolve disputed points in a case and ascertain the correct basis for sentencing.

Wang was earlier sentenced to a year's jail for arranging the girl to have sex with Sim and another man, Tan Chye Hin.

Wang, who was brought in as a witness, said that at about 7pm on 3 Aug last year, he, the girl and another woman were at a coffee shop in Geylang when they met Sim there.

When Sim then asked their ages, Wang said he told him the girl was 17 and the woman was 19, which he claimed were the ages indicated on their passports.

He denied telling Sim that the girl was over 18.

But Sim said he asked Wang in Mandarin if he knew about the law prohibiting any girl below 18 from 'working' (a slang for prostitution).

He said: 'He told me 'Don't worry. I know Singapore law and my girl is above 18.'

No passport with her

While on the way to a hotel in Joo Chiat that day, Sim asked the girl if she had her passport with her. The girl said 'no'.

He then asked her how old she was. She told him she was 18. He said he considered Wang's assurance as well as the girl's word that she was 18 to be important facts.

Sim said: 'All my life, I'm a law-abiding citizen and it is my duty... to ensure that I don't do anything against the law.'

The hearing was adjourned to 24 Jun.

For having paid sex with a girl under 18, Sim could be fined, jailed up to seven years, or face both punishments.

Last December, Tan was sentenced to a year's jail. On appeal, his jail term was reduced to nine months on 20 Feb.

Some of Sim's family members who attended the hearing declined to speak to The New Paper.

A TAIWANESE man who molested a woman on board an MRT train last August was fined $4,000 yesterday.

Hsu Ming Ta, 42, a permanent resident working in an IT company, admitted touching the buttocks of a finance administrator on Aug 4 while the train was between the Raffles Place and Tanjong Pagar stations.

The court heard that the 27-year-old woman was facing the doorway when she felt something brush against her, but dismissed it as an accident.

But then she felt another touch and yet another, and heard a commuter shout: “Hoi, what are you doing?”

She immediately turned around and saw Hsu standing very close to her.

Two men who saw him touching her helped her detain him.

Hsu, who is married with a daughter, could have been jailed up to two years or caned or fined or received any combination of these punishments.

A man who was found guilty of molesting a woman police sergeant was jailed for nine months on Tuesday.

Ilham Tumpang, 25, a former part-time waiter, was convicted after a trial of touching the then 27-year-old police officer's bottom at Mandarin Gallery on Jan 1 last year.

The court heard that the incident caused deep emotional distress to the victim, now 29, who was in uniform when she was molested.

Ilham, who had taken some alcohol, denied touching her buttock. He had no lawyer. The jail sentence will run together with his current 15-month sentence he is serving.