A CUSTOMER service executive who was being probed for siphoning almost $2 million of his company's money was able to skip town to gamble last year as he had not been charged at that time and was not placed on the immigration stop list, authorities said.

Ng Ting Hwa was then under investigation for pocketing $1.96 million from his firm, Molnlycke Health Care Asia-Pacific, a Swedish medical products provider.

He had cashed cheques made out to him from a local importer of health products, Econworldwide Medical Group. The money was for payment of goods the company had bought from Molnlycke.

Ng voluntarily surrendered his passport to the police, said the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) and the police in a joint press statement.

He then lied to the ICA that he had lost his passport and got a new one which he used to travel to Genting Highlands and cruise ships to gamble.

Said the joint statement: 'He used this new passport to exit Singapore. He was not stopped by immigration officers at the checkpoint because the passport he was holding was a genuine and valid Singapore passport.'

 Ng, 32, was jailed 7 1/2 years last week for criminal breach of trust and for lying to the ICA to get a new passport.

Straits Times reader David Han, in a letter to the forum page, had asked if there was a security lapse that allowed Ng to leave the country, since the police had kept his passport.