The chairman of fleet management company Spanco was charged at the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur yesterday with cheating the government to award his company a contract – worth over RM3.9 billion – for the management of government vehicles, according to news reports.

Tan Sri Robert Tan Hua Choon was charged for having allegedly cheated the tender-opening committee by claiming in a document that there was at least 30% Bumiputera shareholding in Spanco. He was accused of cheating the ministry through the Public-Private Partnership Unit, which awarded Spanco a contract worth RM3,966,386,628 to procure and manage the government’s vehicle fleet.

Tan pleaded not guilty and claimed trial for the offence, which was said to have been committed at the finance ministry’s office in Putrajaya between February 27 and 28, 2019. The 83-year-old, who is also the Spanco executive director, was charged under Section 420 of the Penal Code, which carries a jail term of between a year and 10 years, whipping and a fine, upon conviction. Bail was set at RM2 million by judge Suzana Hussin.

The case against Spanco started earlier this year when the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) began investigations into allegations of corruption involving the procurement and management of the government’s vehicle fleet. In February, prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said a thorough investigation would be carried out on the matter.

Spanco was established in 1988 and was given a 25-year concession agreement in 1993 to provide and lease vehicles with full maintenance services for the government. At the end of December 2018, its concession expired and the government called for tenders in February 2019 for a contract to supply, maintain and manage its fleet of official cars for the next 15 years.

During the interim period, Spanco was given two extensions of six months each in 2019 to continue managing the fleet until the end of that year, with a further third extension reportedly given until June 2020.

The suggestion of impropriety surfaced into the public eye last year when Berjaya group founder Tan Sri Vincent Tan filed a suit against the finance ministry and Spanco over a multi-million ringgit vehicle fleet concession deal lost by Naza-Berjaya after the consortium had been awarded the rights to it.

According to Tan, the Naza-Berjaya consortium was picked by the government to handle the fleet concession by the previous administration through a letter of intent (LoI) that was issued in 2019. A year later, the ministry of finance announced it has chosen a new concessionaire to manage the government’s vehicle fleet, but did not name the company – it was widely believed it was the Naza-Berjaya consortium that won the tender.

Tan said the Naza-Berjaya consortium had its LoI terminated unfairly before the actual award was set to be announced, stating that the government then gave the tender to Spanco, despite the Naza-Berjaya tender being RM700 million cheaper than Spanco’s. He then called for an MACC investigation on the issue.

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