SINGAPORE — The Government is reviewing home purchases made between 2007 and 2011 by officers involved in rail planning at the time, where the properties were close to locations subsequently announced as MRT stations.
The Public Service Division (PSD) said in a statement on Sept 25 that it is identifying the purchases and will review them to assess if there was actual misconduct. If there is evidence that an officer used non-public information to make a property purchase for personal benefit, the case will be referred to the police for further investigation, it added.
“As these transactions took place some time ago, we will need time to retrieve the available records and examine the circumstances of each case,” said the PSD, which sits under the Prime Minister’s Office.
The response came after the release of a research paper which claimed Singapore civil servants, in particular those involved in rail planning, disproportionately bought homes near MRT stations that had not yet been publicly announced. The working paper, which was published by US-based non-profit organisation National Bureau of Economic Research, found that the pattern largely disappeared after 2011.
The PSD said earlier on Sept 14 that it was reviewing the paper’s data and methodology and would refer any issue to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau “if there is a material basis to do so”.
On Sept 25, the PSD said the statistical patterns reported in the paper are a concern, and that it takes the assertions seriously.
However, it noted that statistical patterns surfaced by the paper 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, it stated.
“An officer may have purchased a unit in such a development for reasons unrelated to any non-public information,” said the PSD.
“These possibilities do not remove the need for scrutiny, but underscore why each transaction must be examined carefully before any conclusion is drawn.”
The PSD also set out the public service’s rules and safeguards to prevent officers from using non-public information for personal benefit.
It said public officers are required to declare their property purchases. There are also controls over access to sensitive information, as well as established channels for reporting suspected wrongdoing.
These rules and safeguards have been strengthened over time, it added.
Officers with non-public information that may be relevant to a proposed personal transaction – whether involving property, vehicles or financial instruments – must declare this and obtain approval before proceeding, it specified.
The paper, which was published on Sept 11 and has not been peer reviewed, used private-property transaction records from 1995 to 2019 and linked buyers to records of civil servants in the Singapore Government Directory Interactive (SGDI).
The researchers used six SGDI cohorts, from 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2022, to identify civil servants and track their property transactions.
They also used a proprietary dataset containing demographic and residential-address information, as well as the Council for Estate Agencies’ public register of licensed real estate agents. The datasets were combined with private-property transaction records from legal or caveat filings, which included the names of buyers and sellers, according to the paper.
The researchers then identified purchases near MRT stations that had been planned but not yet publicly announced. Their analysis found that civil servants purchased homes near such stations at higher rates than a matched group of non-civil servants, with the difference concentrated in the one to two years before announcements.
On Sept 25, the PSD said the Government expects all public officers to uphold the highest standards of integrity.
“Where there are grounds to suspect that an officer has misused non-public information for personal benefit, the matter will be investigated and appropriate action taken,” it said.
“At the same time, conclusions of wrongdoing must be based on evidence and the facts of each case.”