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''Re Fong Thin Choo'' is an administrative law case decided in 1991 by the High Court of Singapore concerning the legality of a demand by the Director-General of Customs and Excise ("DG") that the applicant's company pay S$130,241.30 in customs duty as it had not exported certain goods. The case was presided over by Justice Chan Sek Keong. The Court decided that the DG had failed to take into account relevant evidence adduced by the applicant's company which could have been capable of rebutting the ''prima facie'' evidence of non-export, and had thus made an insufficient inquiry before arriving at his decision. Since the DG's demand had been based on an incorrect basis of fact and thus had been made contrary to law, the Court granted the applicant an order of prohibition that barred the DG from deducting the sum from certain bankers' guarantees that the applicant's company had lodged with Customs as security. The case appears to have introduced error of material fact into Singapore case law as a ground of judicial review. While the term ''error of material fact'' was not explicitly stated in the case, the Court applied the legal rule laid down in the UK case ''Secretary of State for Education and Science v. Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council'' (1976) that a court may interfere with a government decision which has been based on a misunderstanding or ignorance of an established and relevant fact, and/or an incorrect basis of fact. Courts in several jurisdictions including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK have followed the ''Tameside'' decision and recognized error of material fact as a distinct ground of judicial review. In the case ''E v. Secretary of State for the Home Department'' (2004), the Court of Appeal of England and Wales set out four essential requirements that must be met in order for the ground of review to be successful. It remains to be seen whether the Singapore courts will adopt this refinement of the ''Tameside'' test. ==Facts== Around 12 December 1981, a company called Szetoh Import & Export Pte. Ltd. removed a large quantity of cigarettes from a licensed warehouse and transported them to the port for loading on to a vessel called the ''M.V. Sempurna Sejati'' to be exported out of the country. Although the Singapore Customs supervised the removal and transport of the goods, it did not supervise the loading of the goods on to the vessel. Subsequently, the company delivered to the Customs three outward declarations showing that the goods had been loaded on to the vessel.〔''Re Fong Thin Choo'' () 1 S.L.R.(R.) (Law Reports (Reissue)'' ) 774 at 777, para. 3, High Court (Singapore).〕 Months later, a customs officer discovered that the goods had not been entered into the vessel's manifest. The Director-General of Customs and Excise ("DG") then made inquiries with the agent of the vessel, referred to in the judgment as "TTS", who denied that the goods had been loaded. The DG subsequently asked the company to furnish evidence of the export of the goods. On 19 September 1988, the company produced a document signed by a businessman, "TKM", stating that he had purchased and received the goods. After further correspondence, the DG concluded that the goods had not been exported and requested the company to pay S$130,241.30 in customs duty pursuant to regulation 12(6) of the Customs Regulations 1979.〔Customs Regulations 1979 (Gazette Notification No. S 261/1979), now the , reg. 13(7): see ''Fong Thin Choo'', pp. 777–780, paras. 4–11.〕 On 30 December 1988, the applicant Fong Thin Choo, a director of the company, applied to the High Court of Singapore for leave to obtain a writ of prohibition (now known as a prohibiting order) to prohibit the DG from recovering this sum by deducting it from certain bankers' guarantees that had been lodged with Customs as security. When the Court was hearing the application to grant leave, the State Counsel, relying on section 27 of the Government Proceedings Act,〔 ("GPA").〕 submitted that the court had no jurisdiction to issue an order of prohibition against the Government.〔''Fong Thin Choo'', p. 780, para. 12.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Re Fong Thin Choo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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