Jipson Quah admits to falsely implicating Iris Koh, Defence highlights police inducement

On 14 March 2025, the final day of the ancillary hearing, Dr Jipson Quah retracted key portions of his police statements, admitting that he had falsely implicated Iris Koh as the mastermind of the alleged fake COVID-19 vaccination scheme. He went further, describing parts of his own police statements as “flowery fiction,” suggesting that some details were exaggerated rather than entirely factual. During cross-examination by Koh’s lawyer, Mr Wee Pan Lee, Quah explicitly stated that everything he told investigators about Koh’s role was untrue. He admitted that he had fabricated details because he was desperate to be released on bail. “I was scared and angry,” Quah testified. “I threw Koh under a tank because the investigator told me that I would not be released unless I provided the names of 15 patients mentioned in my statements to the Ministry of Health.” Cross-examination by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Kelvin Chong began on Wednesday afternoon (12 Mar) and continued until late Friday morning, making it the most extensive examination among the four cross-examiners—Adrian Wee, Wee Pan Lee, and Thomas Chua. Quah, 36, is on trial alongside his former clinic assistant Thomas Chua, 43, and Koh, 49, the founder of the anti-vaccine group Healing the Divide. They are accused of conspiring to cheat the Health Promotion Board (HPB) by falsely certifying patients as vaccinated when they were not. The trial, which began on 16 December 2024, has since moved into an ancillary hearing—a trial within a trial—to determine whether Quah’s six police statements, recorded between 22 and 29 January 2022, should be admitted as evidence. Quah, who is currently suspended from medical practice, stated that he had been under extreme stress at the time and was desperate to be released from remand. He was eventually granted bail on the eve of Chinese New Year, after police deemed that he had assisted in completing their investigation.

Patient names were allegedly provided involuntarily under police inducement

On Wednesday, Quah testified that his investigating officer, IO Ng, offered him a recommendation for bail in exchange for patient names alleged to have received fake vaccinations from his clinic. On Thursday, DPP Chong questioned Quah’s testimony, highlighting four versions of the inducement, which varied in the specifics of what IO Ng wanted regarding patients’ names and information. The core issue was whether a bail recommendation was tied to providing patient names. During remand, Quah was presented with several lists of names by the police and asked to identify those to whom he had allegedly administered fake vaccinations. Quah explained the difficulty of providing accurate patient information without access to medical records, leading him to tick names off the lists randomly. He objected to IO Ng about naming patients without referring to medical notes associated with each patient’s name on the lists. IO Ng told him to just do his best. Parties sparred over the definition of what “random identification” meant. Quah insisted that he had ticked the names at random after filtering out the names of friends and family. DPP Chong pointed to instances where Quah had provided specific details, suggesting that he had some knowledge of the patients he had named. DPP Chong challenged Dr Quah’s claim that the names were completely random. One of the patients Quah had identified was Tee Hui Yee. Quah explained that many patients only had their Chinese names shown on the list. He identified Tee Hui Yee after IO Ng told him during police statement taking that Tee Hui Yee was Iris Koh’s personal assistant, Megan Tee. DPP Chong referred to phone messages in which Iris Koh informed Quah that her PA, Megan Tee, was going to see him at his clinic. However, Quah insisted that he learned that Megan Tee and Tee Hui Yee were the same person from IO Ng. Separately, Quah also highlighted that a previous statement describing Tee Hui Yee’s treatment as a “saline injection” was inaccurate because the charge against him was for administering less than two full doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to Tee Hui Yee. He stated that he had to make guesses when answering questions related to Megan Tee. DPP Chong also sought to demonstrate Quah’s knowledge about another patient, Newton David Christopher, who was convicted and imprisoned in 2023 for fake vaccination he received from Quah. Quah stated that much of the information was “guesswork.” He told the court that his clinic computers, which contained medical records of patients, were seized by the police in a raid during his remand in January 2022—records which Quah claims have never been retrieved by the police. Quah testified that he was made to undergo the naming exercise in several police interviews and asked IO Ng, “Why am I doing this?” According to Quah, IO Ng explicitly told him that if he helped to complete the investigation, he would no longer be needed to assist in the investigation, and the police would recommend bail. When cross-examined by Mr Wee Pan Lee, Quah also revealed a high volume of patient traffic for COVID-19 management at his clinics, estimating the COVID-19-related patient count Quah personally treated at 8,000 in the six months leading up to his arrest in January 2022. When questioned about the number of patients specifically referred from the group Healing the Divide, he estimated it to be less than 5%. This contradicted his earlier police statements, where he had claimed that most of the patients who sought fake vaccinations were from Healing the Divide. He conceded that his previous police statements regarding patient numbers, particularly those related to the Healing the Divide group, were false and based on very poor guesswork. During remand, Quah was also presented with 54 photos to identify patients. However, it was a challenging exercise because patients were masked when he saw them in his clinic, and he had never seen their faces unmasked.

Allegations of Inducement and Shifting Blame to Koh

On Thursday afternoon, DPP Chong asked a series of questions to Quah regarding his earlier police statements, aiming to establish a consistent pattern of implicating Iris Koh in his statements to the police. This was intended to challenge Quah’s claim that he had "embellished" his later statements to fully implicate Koh only after a "secret meeting" with HI Tan. Despite acknowledging Koh’s influence in his earlier statements, Quah asserted his autonomy in dealing with the patients he saw. “I did think of many plans on my own,” he stated, maintaining that he was responsible for the medical care of patients. However, a meeting with HI Tan on 28 January 2022 led Quah to shift all blame to Koh, describing her as the "mastermind" and "initiator." Quah testified that during this meeting, HI Tan suggested that he could “show remorse” and demonstrate his willingness to cooperate by naming Koh as the mastermind of the alleged scheme. Quah said that desperate to secure bail, he followed the proposition from HI Tan and embellished his statements to cast Koh as the mastermind. It was also revealed during cross-examination by the co-accused Mr Thomas Chua, who is self-represented, that Quah had become despondent and frustrated when he learned that his offence was upgraded to a charge that was “non-bailable” one week before Chinese New Year. He felt that he had been cooperating throughout the police interviews, having been told by IO Ng that naming patients would help secure bail recommendations. He expressed his sadness to IO Ng but also came to a realisation that he had to pick himself up and move forward.

On Friday morning, DPP Chong focused on Quah’s police statements made in February, March, and April following his release from remand in January 2022. DPP Chong argued that Quah’s claims of coercion were afterthoughts, pointing out that Quah had multiple opportunities to raise concerns about police pressure after he was granted bail but never did. The prosecution noted that Quah continued providing statements to the police while out on bail, yet made no mention of coercion or inducement at the time. DPP Chong further emphasized that these allegations against the officers did not come up at the onset of the main trial, which began on 16 December 2024, but only surfaced at the start of the ancillary hearing. Quah confirmed that he had opportunities to review those statements but often chose not to, citing trauma and fear of jeopardising his bail. He also maintained that his meeting with HI Tan was supposed to be kept secret, which contributed to his delayed disclosure. Quah admitted that the revelation of a secret meeting and allegations of inducement only emerged in his supplemental defence case, after he discharged his former lawyers and appointed his current defence counsel. Quah also explained that IO Ng told him “not to mention to anybody, even your lawyers.” In the late morning, during cross-examination by Iris Koh’s lawyer, Mr Wee Pan Lee, Quah reiterated that Koh became a target of blame after his meeting with HI Tan, where he named her as the "mastermind and initiator of every allegation." Quah conceded that he had "thrown Koh under a tank," adding "spice to the embellishment," driven by a desire to secure a bail recommendation. He agreed with Mr Wee that he had knowingly incriminated others but stated, “At that time, I only wanted to be released on bail. I had no choice but to be selfish.” He admitted that he was the initiator, who had sought to use his position as a doctor and to leverage Koh’s position as an anti-vaccine advocate. However, Quah stated that all patients had received successful vaccinations from him. He further agreed that all incriminating statements against Iris Koh were false. In a significant moment, Quah expressed regret for his actions, acknowledging that he had wronged both Iris Koh and the patients who sought his services. "People had been charged and sent to prison (Newton David Christopher). It is my duty to state the truth and take responsibility, even if it increases my own culpability." When re-examined by his own lawyer, Quah stated that his later statements emphasised Iris Koh as the "brainchild" and "mastermind."

• He stated that the "mastermind with the brainchild" holds the most culpability.
• Quah had not previously described Koh as the initiator or claimed that she had full knowledge.
• He had also not previously stated that Koh sought to use his position as a doctor to execute her plan.

Quah admitted to having had only one face-to-face meeting with Koh before his arrest. He also claimed to have had very few telephone conversations with her. However, he acknowledged that numerous text messages were exchanged. The messages between him and Iris Koh were extracted from his phone and formed part of the prosecution’s evidence against the accused.

Defence Challenges Police Records, Cites Timeline Inconsistencies

After Quah was released from the witness box, his lawyer, Mr Adrian Wee, applied for IO Ng Shiunn Jye to be recalled as a witness. Judge Paul Quan granted the application but limited the scope to questions about 28 January 2022, specifically regarding the prior arrangements and the meeting between HI Tan Pit Seng and Quah, where IO Ng was present. At the heart of the issue was whether Quah’s version of the "secret meeting" was to be believed, compared to the accounts of HI Tan, IO Ng, and CIO Ho, whose individual versions were also contradictory. The defence challenged IO Ng’s claim that the meeting between Quah and HI Tan lasted only 15 minutes, as IO Ng’s access pass records suggested a much longer duration.

• IO Ng’s access records indicated that he was present in the "Lockup" area in Basement 1, where persons in custody (PICs) were held, from 15:24 to 20:19, and again from 20:25 to 23:32.
• HI Tan’s access records placed him in Basement 1 in the "Lockup" from 20:15 to 22:05. He had claimed that the meeting with Quah lasted 30–40 minutes.
• The Lockup electronic station diary, which recorded the timing of Quah’s movements outside his cell and meal times, conflicted with IO Ng’s account.

There was also a discrepancy between Quah’s movement records (station diary) and IO Ng’s statement about where Quah was during that period.

• While official records showed that Quah was out of his cell and with IO Ng from 15:51 to 23:32, IO Ng stated that he had only gone to fetch Quah from his cell to meet HI Tan before the meeting.
• Additionally, the time recorded for the completion of a crucial handwritten police statement, which first implicated Iris Koh as the "mastermind," was contradicted by IO Ng’s own access pass records.
• IO Ng recorded the completion time as 8:20 PM, but his pass records showed he was in his Level 3 office at that time, meaning he could not have been in an interview room with Quah as stated.
• This was further contradicted by Quah, who maintained that, although the written time on the statement was 8:20 PM, the actual time of completion was closer to 11:00 PM, after his meeting with HI Tan.

IO Ng attempted to explain the discrepancies by suggesting that he might have accessed the Lockup area without tapping his pass, possibly by following someone else in. After a series of responses such as "I disagree" or "I can’t recall – it may or may not have happened" to the questions posed, Mr Adrian Wee concluded the cross-examination by putting it to IO Ng that he was "caught in a lie". Wee asserted that Ng’s and HI Tan’s pass access records contradicted their own accounts, and that Ng’s explanations were afterthoughts to "support a lie". IO Ng disagreed. The prosecution chose not to re-examine him.

Implications for the Main Trial

If the court rules that the statements were obtained under inducement, this could significantly weaken the prosecution’s case against the co-accused Koh and Chua as well. Conversely, if the statements are admitted, the defence is likely to argue that the credibility of Quah’s statements, rather than his personal credibility, is compromised by his own retractions. The case has been adjourned to 29 April 2025 for closing submissions. District Judge Paul Quan is expected to rule on the admissibility of Quah’s statements thereafter. Also, read: Doctor alleges police pressured him to implicate Iris Koh in fake COVID-19 vaccination scheme