DATA ON THE NUMBER OF DIGITAL FILES REVIEWED FOR COMPLEX AND HIGH DOLLAR VALUE WHITE-COLLAR CRIME CASES IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS

In this increasingly digitalized world, investigation into white-collar crime has become all the more painstaking. In a symposium I attended as a speaker last year, the UK Director of Public Prosecution that in 1 case that his officers were investigating, there were approximately 32 million files across all devices. Lisa Ofsofsky, the Director of the UK Serious Fraud Office, stated that in a standard SFO case, the material, if printed, could fill up 22 London buses! Because of these developments, I sought from the Minister for Home Affairs an update on the Singapore situation. I also asked the Minister what investments in technology are being made to provide our CAD officers with better tools to sort out the digital material that they have to sieve through and provide discovery of documents in compliance with their legal obligations. In his response, he said that the Police do not keep track of the number of digital files that are being reviewed. He also mentioned that there are digital tools such as the Digital Forensic Kiosk implemented in 2020. My Parliamentary Question and the Minister’s answer may be accessed below.

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Mr Murali Pillai asked the Minister for Home Affairs in relation to complex and high dollar value white-collar crime cases investigated by the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) in the past five years (a) what is the average number of digital files that had to be reviewed for each case for the purpose of investigation; and (b) what investments in technology have been made to provide CAD officers with better tools to sort out digital material in accordance with relevancy, sensitivity and disclosure obligations under the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 and common law.

Mr K Shanmugam: The Police do not keep track of the number of digital or physical files that were reviewed for the purpose of investigation.

To assist officers in investigation, the Police employ a suite of technological solutions. One example is the Digital Forensic Kiosk, which was implemented in 2020. This has enabled investigation officers to retrieve and analyse information from digital devices more easily.