Ex-MUIS senior director, 59, misappropriated over S$68,000 in funds meant for religious school, gets jail

A Singaporean man responsible for managing the affairs of a madrasah misappropriated S$68,629 from the religious school at Braddell Road.

59-year-old Razak Mohamed Lazim was a former senior director at the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) from 2011 to January 2016.

On Sep. 18, Razak was sentenced to seven weeks' jail on one charge of computer misuse and one charge of misappropriation.

CNA reported that he also received a discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNATA) for two charges of allegedly cheating Temasek Foundation International of S$784,900, and one charge of accessing the school's email server.

A DNATA means that the accused can still be prosecuted for these charges at a later date.

Razak will appeal against the sentence, his lawyers said.

Long history with MUIS and madrasah

According to court documents seen by Mothership, at the material time, MUIS was responsible for overseeing the appointments of members to Madrasah Irsyad Zuhri Al-Islamiah's board of governors (BOG).

Razak first joined the Madrasah Management Committee (MMC), subordinate to the BOG, in 2002.

He served as the committee's chairman from 2006 to 2008, joined the BOG sometime in 2008, and was also the executive director of the madrasah from 2009 to 2011.

While being employed by MUIS, Razak also continued his concurrent appointments on the MMC and BOG.

He eventually resigned from MUIS and the madrasah on Jan. 19, 2016, but formally remained on the MMC and BOG til Dec. 31, 2017.

Appointed executive director

Sometime in 2014, the MMC decided that the madrasah's international projects that promoted Islamic education and the building of such schools in the region should be moved to Irsyad Trust Limited (ITL).

This was a separate company established in 2006, intended to be a vehicle for MMC's initiatives.

In April 2016, shortly after his resignation, Razak was appointed to ITL as an executive director; he was one of two required signatories of the company’s bank account with the ability to execute transactions.

Misappropriated funds

According to court documents, the madrasah developed textbooks as part of its teaching curriculum.

The school entered into a distribution agreement with a printing company, Key-Orient Lamitec (KOL), which allowed it to market and distribute the textbooks.

The madrasah, as the "copyright owner", would receive royalty payments from the sale of textbooks.

Sometime in 2019, a publisher signed a content license agreement to use the master copy of the textbooks. Accordingly, it made three payments to KOL between Jan. 15, 2019 and Feb. 4, 2020.

The third payment made to KOL comprised S$205,888. As per the agreement, KOL was supposed to pay S$116,671 to ITL and S$68,629 to the madrasah.

But on Feb. 5, 2020, Razak emailed KOL and requested that both sums be transferred to ITL, claiming that ITL would "disburse the [the madrasah's] royalty directly".

Instead of doing so, he misappropriated the S$68,629 meant for the madrasah.

Failed to disburse donations

10 days later, ITL's board of directors met.

Razak told the board that ITL had made annual contributions of S$20,000 to the school. The board hence decided to make a S$70,000 donation to the madrasah.

As ITL's executive director, Razak was tasked to disburse the "donation".

However, Razak did not transfer any money to the school for around two years.

It was only in Feb. 22, 2022, when he finally prepared a cheque for S$70,000, issued by ITL to the madrasah.

In doing so, he used the S$68,629 sum he had earlier misappropriated from the madrasah's textbook royalties, the court heard.

However, the school responded that it was unable to accept the "donation" due to an "ongoing review of financial transactions" between the two institutions.

On Jun. 8, 2022, Razak was called by the Commercial Affairs Department to assist in investigations.

Several weeks later, Razak transferred an additional S$70,000 from ITL's bank account to KOL's.

He called it an "adjustment to agent fee for exploring Arabic".

"Super user" access rights

Razak was also granted "super user" access rights to the madrasah's email server, which gave him the ability to configure and access email accounts.

Despite having already resigned from his position in 2019, Razak used his access rights to create a new account that would forward emails sent to his old account to his personal email address.

Court documents stated that Razak admitted that he did so without obtaining any authorisation from the madrasah’s principal, vice-principals or heads of department.

Penalties

The prosecution sought a sentence of two to three months' imprisonment, according to court documents.

Prosecutors noted that while there is no evidence of loss or damage caused by Razak's unauthorised access to the madrasah server, it was highly significant as he faced three similar charges and a considerable degree of deliberation and premeditation was involved.

They added that he dishonestly misappropriated S$68,629 which belonged to the madrasah, a sum which was very high.

For accessing an email server without permission, a first-time offender can face up to two years' jail, a fine of up to S$5,000, or both.

For misappropriating funds, an offender could be jailed for up to two years, fined, or both.