TWO men working for a large parallel importer were fined on Tuesday for removing evidence seized by Singapore Customs officers for a tax under-declaration probe.

In the first case of its kind here, Ng Chee Siang, 25, was fined $12,000, while his accomplice Chua Wee Meng, 38, was fined $8,000 by district judge Toh Yung Cheong after they pleaded guilty to the offence.

They could have been each jailed for up to 18 months.

Both men were working in the purchasing department of Auto Touch Credit, the main company behind Pinnacle Motors, a retailer of parallel imported cars which posted sales in excess of $250 million last year. Chua was the purchasing manager.

Their offences took place last June, when a party of Customs officers, armed with a search warrant, raided Auto Touch's premises in Automobile Megamart in Kg Ubi.

According to a statement of facts by a Customs prosecutor, the officers seized several files, on suspicion that the company was underdeclaring the values of their car imports to evade tax.

During the operation, Ng was spotted holding one of the seized files, heading for the exit. A Customs officer stopped him and retrieved the file.

A few hours later, Chua was seen leaving the office with the same file. A Customs officer shouted at him to stop but Chua ignored him and ran to the staircase.

At the staircase landing, Chua passed the file to Ng. Both headed for the carpark via different exits.

But a Customs officer intercepted them in the carpark and took the file back. Both were arrested in September.

In sentencing the pair on Tuesday, Judge Toh said there was no proof 'that evidence was destroyed', for which a custodial sentence was called for.

In his mitigation plea, their lawyer Foo Cheow Ming of KhattarWong said both men were 'not rogues but utter fools'.

He said they were 'hardworking, upcoming and basically decent young men, both of whom having led a blameless life up to this time... when they acted contrary to the law out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the company'.

Pinnacle managing director Valerie Tan said on Tuesday that the two will keep their jobs, but said the company did not pay for their fines 'because they acted in their personal capacity'.

She could not say why they tried to retrieve the file, which she claimed had 'nothing to do with new car imports'.

The tax evasion probe is still underway.