Court acquits lawyer and MP Christopher de Souza of professional misconduct charge

People’s Action Party MP Christopher de Souza was cleared of a charge of professional misconduct as a lawyer on Monday (Jul 31).

The decision by the Court of Three Judges came after the Law Society argued for him to be suspended for four years.

de Souza, who is the Deputy Speaker of Parliament and an MP for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, was facing the court in a hearing to decide the outcome of disciplinary proceedings brought against him by the Law Society.

His lawyer, on the other hand, urged the court to acquit him of the charge, arguing that the Law Society had persistently advanced a doggedly misconceived case against de Souza, a partner at Lee & Lee.

The court, comprising Justices Belinda Ang, Woo Bih Li and Kannan Ramesh, said that the Law Society did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that he had intended to help his client suppress evidence.

de Souza was found guilty by a two-member disciplinary tribunal in 2022 for helping his client suppress evidence by preparing and filing an affidavit that did not reveal his client had breached an undertaking not to use certain documents.

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The case related to his conduct while he was acting for Amber Compounding Pharmacy and Amber Laboratories.

Amber, which was initially represented by another law firm, was granted a court order to carry out a search for documents, on condition it gives an undertaking not to use the seized documents without further order.

However, Amber used some documents to lodge reports with various authorities.

Lee & Lee later took over the civil suit, and de Souza advised Amber to apply for the court’s permission to use the documents.

On Monday, Madan Assomull, representing the Law Society, argued that de Souza knew about the breach but failed to disclose this in the affidavit of a company representative that was filed to support the application.

Assomull argued there was a deliberate intention to make the affidavit vague. He also argued that de Souza made the considered decision not to exhibit the reports in the affidavit.

de Souza’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Tan Chee Meng, argued the affidavit did reveal that Amber had used the documents.

The affidavit by Samuel Sudesh Thaddeus, a representative from Amber, said he had reviewed the seized documents, came to the conclusion that criminal offences were committed and decided to lodge the reports, argued Tan.

Justice Woo commented that the paragraph in question was not worded as clearly as de Souza seemed to think.

The judge said: “I had to read paragraph 24 many times because it’s not as clear as he made it out to be.”

Tan replied the affidavit could have been better drafted, but argued that the lack of clarity did not show an intention to assist Amber to suppress evidence.

He said Sudesh’s resistance to disclosure led to a series of e-mail exchanges between the Lee & Lee team and Amber, resulting in seven iterations of the affidavit.

Tan said Mr de Souza had acted with utmost integrity, and he showed an internal e-mail in which de Souza flagged Sudesh’s amendments for giving an incorrect impression.

But Assomull questioned if the court wanted to send the message to lawyers that sometimes they can get away on the basis of bad drafting. THE STRAITS TIMES