Jail For Two Men Who Accepted Bribes To Under-Declare Passengers’ Excess Baggage

As an avid traveller, I enjoy packing for trips, unlike most people.

I love planning what to pack way before so that I won’t leave out anything on the trip.

Regardless of which country you visit, you’re bound to witness travellers ferociously unpacking and transferring their belongings from their check-in luggage to carry-on.

All in the hope of meeting the weight limit set by the airline.

At this point, I would like to remind everyone that while airtight bags are great at saving luggage space, excessive usage is not recommended.

Because while it helps to compress the space, it doesn’t reduce the weight #physics101

You’d wind up over-exceeding the stipulated weight limit and end up paying the charges for extra baggage.

Why The Weight Limit?

Unfortunately, airline staff are strict on the weight limit of baggage because cabin crew have reportedly suffered injuries from helping passengers with their baggage.

On top of that, this results in flight delays and safety of other passengers.

Scoot has been in the limelight for the recent flight delay in March and a month later, they made headlines again.

Airline staff paid to keep mum about the excess weight limit of baggage

According to TODAYonline on 26 April (Friday), two customer service associates working for Scoot accepted bribes in return for under-declaring the weight of passengers’ check-in baggage.

The two offenders are Ayyadurai Karunanithi, 48 and Gerizim Kirubai Raj Deved, 35.

In addition to serving time in jail for nine weeks and seven weeks, both had to pay a fine of S$500 and S$630 respectively.

Their actions were uncovered by the police after a report on baggage touting syndicate by The New Paper last year.

Ayyadurai acquired S$600 from bribery

Ayyadurai is a Singaporean Permanent Resident working with a logistics service provider, UBTS. He was first approached by a man known as Saravanan Muthuraja at Changi MRT Station early last year and turned down his request for help.

Not long after, the two met again when Ayyadurai was working at Scoot’s Check-in counter. This time, he let Saravanan go with the excess baggage and got money in return.

That was the first time the transaction happened.

Since then, Saravanan started working with Ayyadurai to avoid paying extra baggage charges and even helped Saravanan’s friends evade additional fees.

Ayyadurai had allegedly received S$600 worth of bribes in one month.

Gerizim earned S$630 from bribery

Similar to Ayyadurai, Gerizim was approached by a stranger known as Gajendran Ramesh. Ramesh is an Indian national who resells electronics from Singapore in Malaysia.

Gerizim is a Singaporean employed by Sats Asia Pacific Star and had been accepting bribes since early last year.

Both came to an agreement whereby Gerizim would be paid S$3 per kilogram under-reported.

During the seven months where the two had been in cahoots, Gerizim had pocketed at least S$630.

Their penalties could’ve been much worse – jail of up to five years and a fine up to S$100,000 according to the Prevention of Corruption Act.

No surprise for a country known to issue fines for everything under the sun.