The Straits Times said the commissioner of charities had started an inquiry into the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped, which provides assistance to some 2500 beneficiaries.

The National Council of Social Services will, meanwhile, oversee the association for the blind while its board stays in place pending the inquiry.

The new probe follows a scandal over the National Kidney Foundation, whose entire management was sacked after it was disclosed that its chief executive was being paid S$600,000 (US$350,000) a year, plus first-class air travel and upkeep for his Mercedes car.

The revelations sparked widespread anger as an estimated two-thirds of Singaporeans have donated to the foundation, the island's biggest charity and a cause closely identified with the political establishment.

The wife of former prime minister Goh Chok Tong stepped down as patron of the foundation and its former chief executive T.T. Durai is now the subject of an investigation by financial crime watchdogs.

The charity had reserves of $260 million when the scandal broke.

No figures for the blind charity's reserves were mentioned in the Straits Times report, but the country's most prominent social worker, Gerard Ee, told the newspaper the new case was not a repeat of the kidney foundation saga, and that it just needed "some tidying up".

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