SINGAPORE – The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) director-general’s personal assistant, who leaked information on school closures and the services that would continue operating during the Covid-19 circuit breaker, was jailed for six weeks on Friday (June 3).
Noorain Jubli, 39, who had access to the director-general’s e-mail, leaked sections of the draft press releases to her husband, Khairul Annuar Zakaria, 40.
He then sent the information to a WhatsApp group, and the images found their way to social media and went viral.
Khairul Annuar, a technical officer, was fined $2,000 on Friday.
SFA said it has started disciplinary proceedings against Noorain following her conviction. She has been suspended since April 2020.
The court heard that on April 3, 2020, at 8.38am, an e-mail with information including draft media statements was sent to the director-general.
Noorain saw the e-mail and used her phone to take a picture of a portion of a draft joint media statement.
She sent this to Khairul Annuar on WhatsApp and told him not to share it with others.
Noorain later told him she knew which essential services would continue operating during the circuit breaker, and he asked her to send him the list to find out if his job would be affected.
She sent him eight images of this information.
He found out about the impending circuit breaker through Noorain, who had got the information from a draft Ministry of Health press release setting out the circuit breaker measures.
Khairul Annuar cropped one of the images to reveal only the text and sent it to a WhatsApp group consisting of 12 others.
