MUMBAI: On 3 October, following the admission by a Singaporean optical disc manufacturer that it had illegally abetted copyright infringing activity, Singapore Police destroyed 435,000 pirated VCDs seized during a raid on a warehouse last year.

On 30 September, 2005, a raid on a warehouse in Kaki Bukit resulted in Singapore’s largest ever seizure of pirated VCDs, and the arrest of two Singaporean men, Tan Suah Soon and Ho Sun Fatt for copyright infringement.

The discs had been dubbed into French and were intended for export to Africa. During the course of the investigation a Singapore-based optical disc factory, Trendisc Technology Pte Ltd, was implicated as the manufacturer of the infringing discs.

On 14 March, 2006, a Singapore district court sentenced Tan and Ho to 33 and 24 months in prison, respectively and they began serving their sentences on 28 March, 2006. Following its guilty plea on 20 September, Trendisc Technology Pte. Ltd. was fined S$54,000 (USD$34,000).

“The public destruction of nearly half a million pirated discs sends a very clear message that piracy is a crime and will not be tolerated. The timely interception of such a large quantity of pirated discs before their dispersal to overseas markets was a great coup for the Singapore authorities and we applaud their continued work in defending intellectual property rights,” said Motion Picture Association Asia-Pacific senior vice president and regional director Mike Ellis.