Picture of John Soh: Samuel Issac Chua/The Edge Singapore
John Soh Chee Wen — the alleged mastermind of the 2013 penny stock crash — having heard the testimonies and accounts made in court, is of the view that everyone involved in the saga had been making money through their trading activities — regardless of where they were in the pecking order.
“I’ve seen the figures, I’ve seen the facts, I’ve seen the accounts while I’m here in court and I know that everybody [was] making money,” he said during his cross-examination by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Teo Guan Siew.
Soh and his co-accused and romantic partner Quah Su-Ling are on trial for allegedly orchestrating Singapore’s largest share manipulation scheme between 2012 and 2013 involving three penny stocks: Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital (now Attilan Group) and LionGold (renamed Shen Yao Holdings). The eventual collapse of these counters — collectively referred to as BAL — in October 2013, wiped out some $8 billion in market value.
Secretary’s ‘tollgate’
Despite admitting he made money for his associates, Soh insists he never gave trading instructions — even if he readily admitted to actively promoting the stocks, specifically LionGold and to a lesser extent Blumont.
Instead, the court heard that Soh had engaged in an ad hoc exercise of sorts to assess the exuberance of investors.
This stance was put to the test between June 3 and June 9 when DPP Teo showed the court several instances where had received updates — either via text or email — on trades that had been administered under various accounts.
For instance, Soh had received several emails from Michelle Neo, the then secretary of the Lakeview Club in Malaysia, a favourite hangout of the accused and many of his associates.
The court was shown Neo’s emails containing a spreadsheet of sorts that seemed to be tracking the number of shares due in various accounts, under various brokers.
“Your Honour, I wouldn’t say I know what it tracks,” said Soh, adding that he was not sure of what the spreadsheet meant since it had just come into his email.
DPP Teo pointed to a column in the spreadsheet indicating that “1,340” were due on Feb 4, 2013. This coincided with data from the Singapore Exchange showing that 1.34 million LionGold shares were due on Feb 4. These shares had been purchased under the accounts of ESA Electronics, Kuan Ah Ming, Lim Siew Hooi and Quah — handled by Ng Kit Kiat, a remisier at OCBC Securities who had earlier testified against Soh and Quah.
When pressed if these accounts were treated as a pool under the same broker, Soh agreed. “Whoever was telling me of this, your Honour, would be just focusing on giving me the absolute volume. Without breakdown, without price, for whatever purposes,” he said.
Soh also told the court that such information – which he received from “time to time” was “totally ad hoc, depending on the curiosity of what’s happening in the market and so on and so forth”.
However, seeing as the spreadsheet had been sent by Neo, Soh believed there was a different intent: Getting people “to volunteer as some kind of a tollgate for our continuous community programmes”. He said Neo was looking into the buying patterns of different individuals to see if they were making profits. She would subsequently request for them to make donations for the community, if they were making profits.
One such beneficiary was the Sin Min School, situated in Puchong, Malaysia. Soh told the court earlier in the trial that he had been heavily involved in refurbishing the school sometime in 1993.
‘Bare minimum details’
“It became a classic turnaround case,” Soh told the court on the first day of his examination-in-chief. The school officials were initially keen to have the school named after Soh to recognise his contributions, but he declined and had it named “after the three women in my life: My grandmother, my mother and my wife”.
Soh reckoned that Neo’s practice was not a “continuous ongoing exercise”. This explained why the spreadsheet contained “bare minimum details” that excluded the price at which the stock was purchased.
“It is not meant to be used as a report for trading purposes, for instruction purposes, not for monitoring purposes, because if it is — it shouldn’t be ad hoc. It would have to be continuous,” Soh stressed. He went on to say that he eventually put a stop to this practice so as not to give off the impression that they were “squeezing people for donations”.
Soh went on to call what Neo did a “fruitless exercise” since it was “just going on a straight line that if a person is being very vigorous, very exuberant,” he is seen to be making money. “This so-called report by itself, is worthless for any purpose other than to under- stand the level of activity,” he added.
The court heard that this exercise was “totally separate” from Soh’s promotion of various stocks such as LionGold. “If [people] choose to take my promotion or advice, they make money, all the best to them,” he said.
However, DPP Teo cited an instance on Jan 19, 2013 when Soh responded to Neo’s email saying, “How ah, the volume roll for Lion ballooned to 80m...you will have to guide me, I juu cho juu cham”.
Juu cho juu cham is Hokkien for “the more I do it, the more difficult it becomes”. Soh then clarified that this was sent shortly after LionGold entered the Mid Cap Index in December 2012. Brokerage houses, such as DMG, proceeded to “hit the ground running” with heavy promotions to try to get more margins for everyone.
“Disagree” was Soh’s response when pressed by DPP Teo if the spreadsheets from Neo con- tained information on accounts he had controlled. Soh’s response was also the same when quizzed if he needed to know the due positions in the accounts so as to plan his market rolling activities and ensure he had enough lines to buy back the shares when they were due.
Quah’s ‘triggered’
During the course of DPP Teo’s cross-examination, Soh disagreed that he and Quah had been instructing brokers what to trade. Drawing reference to several trades that had been administered by Henry Tjoa Sang Hi, Soh highlighted that Quah had not given any orders for those.
“This is for their own records and it proves one point,” Soh started. The point he was referring to was that Tjoa, who was a remisier with Phillip Securities, had been dealing directly with the account holders who were all monitoring the shares that
they were vested in.
DPP Teo went on to show the court an email from Quah to Soh titled “funds needed for week 14 Nov”, that had been sent on Nov 13, 2011. DPP Teo suggested that a pool of funds were needed to pay off ofcontra losses incurred by several accounts. disagreed, saying it could be Quah’s way to ask for Soh’s associates like Neo Kim Hock, the former Blumont chairman, to repay her.
“It could be likely a cut and paste,” Soh said, adding that he did not know what the source was. “I mean it’s just the way things
happen. I can’t interpret many of those things and I really don’t know.”
The court was shown another email from Quah to Soh titled “compromised” on May 19, 2013. This was a forwarded copy of a Feb 6, 2013 email that had the subject “all guns to the battlefield”.
While Soh could not remember the circumstances under which this had been sent, he reckoned it was when Quah had started to suspect his involvement with Cheng Jo-Ee.
Cheng, who runs her own firm Alethia Asset Management, has been described as Soh’s “on again and off again girlfriend” during the trial. Quah had been somewhat “triggered” by Cheng having “hijacked” Soh’s emails and Blackberry.
Quah’s May 19, 2013 email goes on to state that she “never jostled for directorship” and that Soh had somehow thought she could contribute to IPCO International, where she eventually became CEO. Soh added that he had put in a word for Quah
seeing that she was frugal.
Quah goes on to say that Soh is the owner and caretaker and “she’s taking care of what is [his]”. “I think I may have been overzealous in protecting your interest that I may have overlooked rewarding IPCO staff and all,” she wrote in her email. “You see, less for us, means more for you, more for the group. It is after all, the big picture that we have to look at, as you have taught me”.
For Soh, this was an emotional email that had been sent at the lowest point of the duo’s relationship. “Ms Quah, by her own words, is bitching about here,” he explained. “It looks like she just wanted to forget everything and walk away and she
doesn’t want anything to do with whatever that I was hiding away and all these things,” he said, adding that he did not blame her for feeling as such since he had indeed been hiding things from Quah.
Seeing that Quah was tired, stressed and — in his words — “all over the place”, Soh said would have instinctively tried to calm her down by saying “whatever she wants to hear and let it pass”.
The trial continues with DPP Teo’s cross-examination of Soh.
