Tan Boon Teik

on Gower Street in May 1956 Tan was born on 17 January 1929 in Penang, Straits Settlements (now part of Malaysia), and had his secondary education at the Penang Free School. He graduated from University College London with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree with honours in 1951, and later a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in 1953. Between 1961 and 1962, he held a Rockefeller Research Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London. He was a barrister-at-law of England and Wales, having been called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1952, and became an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court of the Federation of Malaya in 1954. ==Career==

Initially in private legal practice in Penang after being called to the Bar there, the Director of the Legal Aid Bureau (1959), In 1961, he represented Singapore at the Seminar on the Protection of Human Rights in the Administration of Criminal Justice organised by the United Nations in Wellington, New Zealand. With effect from 1 September 1963, he became the Solicitor-General, succeeding T. Kulasekaram who had been appointed a Supreme Court judge. which involved four executives of the Nanyang Siang Pau (South Seas Business Newspaper), a Chinese-language newspaper, who had been detained without trial under the Internal Security Act ("ISA") for "glamorising communism and stirring up communal and chauvinistic sentiments over Chinese language, education and culture". Upon an application by the detainees for habeas corpus, the High Court held that the President, when acting on Cabinet's advice to detain a person under the ISA, exercises a subjective discretion as to whether the person is a risk to national security, which is not justiciable by the courts. Although the judgment was later disapproved by the Court of Appeal in Chng Suan Tze v. Minister for Home Affairs (1988), in 1989 Parliament amended the Constitution and the ISA to "freeze" the law relating to detentions under the Act to that applying in Singapore on the date when Lee Mau Seng was decided. In the 1970s, the financial collapse of two companies, Gemini Chit Fund Corporation and Stallion Corporation, led to criminal charges being brought against their executives. The companies operated chit funds, which were schemes in which investors paid sums of money by instalments to the companies in exchange for the entitlement to be allotted a larger return from the fund. The allotment was determined by lot or by auction. Following their collapse, it was estimated that 40,000 investors had lost about S$50 million. and its chairman V.K.S. Narayanan received nine months' imprisonment for two charges under the Companies Act. Stallion's executive director Martin Ler Cheng Seng pleaded guilty to authorising his firm to unlawfully bid at a Stallion chit fund sale, and was jailed for a year. Tan also successfully brought proceedings for scandalising the court against Wong Hong Toy, the Chairman of the Workers' Party of Singapore, in 1983, and against respondents involved in publishing, printing and distributing articles that appeared in the Asian Wall Street Journal in 1985 and 1991. Where public international law matters were concerned, in 1966 Tan attended the Sixth Committee on International Law at the 21st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and chaired a meeting of law ministers to review extradition arrangements among Commonwealth nations at Marlborough House, London, in 1982. He also regularly attended Commonwealth Law Ministers' Conferences and ASEAN Law Association Conferences. and revised editions of Singapore statutes in 1970 and 1985. A 1990 revised edition of subsidiary legislation was subsequently published in 1992. In January 1990, the Attorney-General's Chambers launched LawNet, a computer database then containing the full text of Singapore legislation, at the cost of $4.3 million. Tan was involved in the establishment of the Singapore Academy of Law, a professional association of judges, lawyers, Legal Service officers and law academics, and served as its vice-president from 1992. and held the post until August 1999. In March 1992, he appointed a committee to review Singapore's arbitration laws, which then dealt only with domestic arbitration, to bring them "in line with international developments". The committee's work led to the enactment of the International Arbitration Act in 1994. In addition to his Attorney-General post, Tan was the Chairman of the Singapore Petroleum Company (SPC; 1971 – August 1999), a director and deputy chairman (from 1985) and later chairman (June 1990 – 1994) of the Insurance Corporation of Singapore (ICS), Vice-president (from 1972) and President (from 1992) of the Singapore Musical Society, and a fellow of the Singapore Institute of Directors. ==Later years==

Tan's service as Attorney-General was extended by the Government twice to enable them to find a replacement for him – the first time for five years when he was 55, and again for three years when he was 60 years old. He eventually retired with effect from 30 April 1992; the post was taken up by Chan Sek Keong. In September that year he was named Ambassador to Hungary resident in Singapore, and in January and May 1994 the non-resident ambassadorships of Austria and the Slovak Republic were respectively added to his portfolio. in January 2006, for many years the home of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra During his retirement, Tan remained Chairman of the SPC, the ICS and the SIAC, positions which he had assumed when he was the Attorney-General. he also continued as chairman and Honorary Chairman of the Singapore Symphonia Company Ltd., the corporation managing the Singapore Symphony Orchestra which he had helped to found in 1979, until September 1999. In July 1992, Tan was appointed a director of United Industrial Corporation Ltd. (UIC) and its property arm, Singapore Land Ltd. He became Chairman of Morgan Grenfell Asia Ltd. in November 1993. In addition, he was Chairman of Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings. The funeral was held on 13 March at the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Ignatius, followed by a private cremation at Mandai Crematorium. Tan was survived by his wife Mrs. Tan Sook Yee, his son Pip Tan Seng Hin and daughter Tan Sui Lin, and five grandchildren. at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore from 1964 to 2005 and was its dean between 1980 and 1987, while both of Tan's children are members of the legal profession. ==Honours and awards==

In 1978 Tan was awarded the Darjah Utama Bakti Cemerlang (Distinguished Service Order), On 8 June 1998, Tan was conferred the rank of Officer in the National Order of the Legion of Honour of France for his contributions towards increasing commercial ties between France and Singapore as co-chairman of the France–Singapore Business Council since 1995. He was also an honorary fellow of the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators. ==Selected works==

• • the text of a lecture to the International Maritime Bureau at Queen Mary College, University of London, on 4 June 1985. It was reprinted as • , the text of the Fourth Singapore Law Review Lecture at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, on 4 December 1987. ==References==