IPOH: A restaurant supervisor was fined RM40,000 here today (Sept 13) for trying to bribe an Immigration Department officer.
Session judge Ainul Shahrin Mohamad ordered Heng Siou Wei, 33, to serve four months jail if she failed to pay the fine.
Heng was charged with offering RM15,000 to a senior Immigration officer as an inducement for the latter not to take action against foreign workers at the restaurant 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 3am yesterday (Sept 12).
The charge was framed under Section 214 of the Penal Code which provides imprisonment of up to 10 years, or fine or both upon conviction.
According to the facts of the case, Immigration Department officers raided a restaurant in Teluk Intan on Wednesday where 10 foreign workers at the premise were found without valid documents.
The foreign workers comprised a Vietnamese man, an Indonesian woman and eight Myanmar men.
Heng later pleaded for her employees to be freed before offering RM15,000 to the officer.
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. — BERNAMA