SINGAPORE (Oct 28): After a slow start to the week, excitement in the trial of John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling — the alleged masterminds behind the 2013 penny stock crash — rose to a climax of sorts towards the end of the week as the personal assistant of Soh’s former romantic partner, Adeline Cheng Jo-Ee, took the stand on Oct 24 and 25.
Prosecution witness Ivy Tan Ai Bee worked for Cheng at Alethia Asset Management, a small-scale asset management firm owned by the latter. Tan said she left the company because it was “not acting as an actual fund management firm”.
According to Tan, the first hint of dubious activity emerged when she was appointed a director of Alethia shortly after joining the company. Cheng told her this was because the firm required at least two directors with relevant experience in order to obtain the capital market licence needed to register as a fund management company. Tan says she believed Cheng had difficulties obtaining her representative licence.
Suspicions aroused
Tan noticed that, apart from neither giving advice to clients nor conducting management activities such as portfolio analysis, Alethia effectively had only four clients. The four British Virgin Islands-registered companies were owned by three Malaysians: Idris Abdullah, Oei Cheu Kok and Neo Kim Hock.
While Tan said she did not know how they were connected, she explained that these account holders were a “group”, together with Soh and Quah.
Tan was given authority to place orders in the trading accounts of these companies, as well as that of Alethia Elite, a company owned by Cheng’s father. She soon realised that trades under these accounts were made in only four counters: Blumont Group, LionGold Corp, Asiasons Capital (now Attilan Group) and Inno-Pacific Holdings (now Innopac Holdings).
During examination-in-chief by deputy public prosecutor Jiang Ke-Yue, Tan said Cheng referred to these four counters as the “JS shares” — referring to John Soh. Asked why this was the case, Tan said it was because Soh was the “boss of all these counters”.
Tan recounted an incident in which Soh called the office and asked for Cheng. She noted that throughout her time in the company, none of the other clients had ever called the office or given her instructions to place orders.
Soh had tried to place an order to buy 1.2 million LionGold shares once “the screen [shows] ‘one million shares sold’”, Tan said. Following this phone call, Cheng told her to “only take instructions on placing orders from [Cheng]”. Cheng then confirmed the instruction to buy 1.2 million LionGold shares.
In court on Oct 24, Tan testified that this aroused her suspicions. She explained that Soh’s instruction was “not a simple buy or sell order”, and that she believed it was “actually a market manipulation”. She added that she believed that Soh and Quah were in fact the ones instructing trade orders in the accounts.
Love triangle
Tan also testified that Cheng was “in a love triangle” with Soh and Quah. While Cheng is said to have been in a “romantic relationship” with Soh, the latter was also believed to be “romantically involved” with his alleged co-conspirator Quah.
Tan told the court that Cheng was “unhappy”, as she felt Soh preferred Quah to her.
The court was shown several messages exchanged between Tan and Cheng, which showed Cheng’s displeasure at Soh and Quah’s being together. Cheng also referred to Quah as “Aunty” — a disparaging term for an elderly woman. “[Cheng] complained that Soh did not spend enough time with her,” Tan told the court.
In one message to Tan, Cheng is shown to have said: “If I want to maintain [business], I must pretend to be his girlfriend with no questions asked.”
Later, Cheng is also seen to have texted Tan to say that her relationship with Soh was “not just about [her] getting business from him”. Cheng had added that “[Soh] also need my huge hedging lines which many others can’t provide”. Tan explained that this referred to “credit facility granted by the banks”, and that this was to finance the purchase of the four counters.
‘Incomplete’ disclosure by prosecution
Earlier in the week, the defence counsel had clashed with state prosecutors over the “incomplete” disclosure of messages and data retrieved from three mobile phones believed to be linked to the manipulation of shares in the 2013 penny stock crash.
The prosecution in court on Oct 23 presented evidence from three mobile phones: an Apple iPhone 4 belonging to Soh’s former girlfriend Cheng; a BlackBerry Q10 belonging to Ken Tai Chee Ming, a former broker who was once part of Soh’s “inner circle”; and a Samsung Note 3 belonging to James Hong Gee Ho, a former executive director of Blumont.
Soh’s lawyer, senior counsel N Sreenivasan of K&L Gates Straits Law, took issue with the fact that the prosecution had earlier disclosed only an “incomplete” set of 675 SMS messages extracted from Cheng’s iPhone 4 to the court. He asked the prosecution to explain why the complete set of 2,260 messages retrieved from Cheng’s mobile device was disclosed to the court only on the night of Oct 22.
Deputy public prosecutor David Koh explained that the prosecution had given the complete set of messages to the defence only because they would be relevant for the examination of Cheng, who would be appearing in the next part of the trial. Koh added that it adduced only the messages that were relevant to the case and that it was required by law to disclose. He also pointed out there had been no requests from the defence up until then for further messages.
Justice Hoo Sheau Peng agreed with the defence counsel, however, and said full disclosure would have been more favourable.
Telco, brokerage representatives shed light on CAD, MAS probes
At the start of the week, a representative from Singapore Telecommunications had said that calls made through Malaysian phone numbers to Singapore were “traceable”. Prosecution witness Yeo Poh Meng, Singtel’s customer service executive officer, said she received requests from the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to screen certain phone numbers, individuals and entities, and furnish details of any calls and SMS messages, including both local and overseas communications.
Meanwhile, a representative of Maybank Kim Eng Securities on Oct 22 admitted that the brokerage did not conduct internal investigations into accounts under broker Ong Kah Chye, even after receiving probes from CAD and MAS. These accounts under Ong are believed to have been part of a web of trading accounts used by Soh and Quah.
Prosecution witness Kwek Thiam Buck, head of the retail brokerage trade support department at MBKE, said under cross-examination on Oct 22 that the brokerage firm knew of the severity of Ong’s involvement only upon hearing from state prosecutors.
