Former MUIS director jailed in Singapore for misappropriating madrasah funds — Channel NewsAsia
In Singapore, former senior director of the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) Razak Mohamed Lazim was sentenced to seven weeks in prison for misappropriating more than S$68,000 intended for the Madrasah Irsyad Zuhri Al-Islamiah religious school. He was also found guilty of unauthorized access to the school’s mail server after leaving his position, Channel NewsAsia reports.
Funds from textbook publishing
Fifty-nine-year-old Lazim headed the madrasah during his time at MUIS, from 2011 to January 2016. He later became executive director of Irsyad Trust Limited (ITL) and one of the company’s two authorized signatories for its bank account.
The case concerned royalties from the distribution and publishing of textbooks developed by the madrasah. In February 2020, Key-Orient Lamitec was to transfer S$116,671 to ITL and S$68,629 to the school as the copyright owner. At Lazim’s request, both sums, totalling S$185,300, were paid into ITL’s account, which was to independently transfer the madrasah’s share.
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However, S$68,629 was not transferred to the school. Judge Kamala Ponnampalam noted that ITL’s board of directors had instructed Lazim to pay S$70,000 to the madrasah, but this did not happen. According to her, the school was unable to use the funds for two years, and restitution was made before the investigation began.
Access to the mail server
In 2019, Lazim, who had previously held super-administrator rights to the madrasah’s mail server, created a new mailbox on it and set up forwarding from his former work address to his personal email. At that time, he had already left MUIS and the school and had no authorization to access the server.
The prosecution sought a prison sentence of two to three months, while the defence requested that the punishment be limited to a S$7,000 fine. Lazim’s lawyers said he would appeal the verdict. Separately, the court granted him a discharge not amounting to an acquittal on two charges of alleged cheating involving Temasek Foundation International of nearly S$785,000 and one additional count of accessing the mail server.
