IPOH: A restaurant supervisor was fined RM40,000, in default four months in jail, by the Sessions Court here today for bribing an Immigration officer.
Judge Ainul Shahrin Mohamad meted out the fine on Heng Siou Wei, 33, after the woman pleaded guilty to an alternative charge.
Heng was charged with giving a gratification of RM15,000 to a senior Immigration officer as an inducement for the latter not to take legal action against her foreign workers who were found without valid documents.
The offence was committed at the office of the Malaysian Immigration Department in Perak, Home Ministry Complex, here, at 3 am yesterday (Sept 12).
The charge was framed under Section 214 of the Penal Code which provides imprisonment for up to 10 years, or with a fine or both upon conviction.
According to the facts of the case, an operation, Op Selera, was conducted by the State Immigration Department at a restaurant in Teluk Intan last Wednesday (Sept 11), where 10 foreign workers at the premises were found without valid documents.
The foreign workers comprise a Vietnamese man, an Indonesian woman and eight Myanmar men.
Heng pleaded for her employee to be freed and then took out RM15,000 to give to the officer despite the officer’s warning.
Following that, the officer arrested her and confiscated the cash, which the court ordered to be forfeited to the government.
The prosecution was conducted by deputy public prosecutors from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), Maziyah Mansor and Sharul Azuan Ghazali, while Heng was unrepresented.
