Photo: The Edge Singapore
John Soh – the alleged mastermind of the 2013 penny stock saga – maintained his stance that the trades made in the lead up to the crash were not based on instructions given by him.
“Where are my instructions, where are Su-Ling’s instructions?” he said exasperatedly when shown a series of trades made on different dates, on May 20, the fifth day of his examination-in-chief by his defence counsel, N Sreenivasan of K&L Gates Straits Law.
Soh and his co-accused Quah Su-Ling allegedly orchestrated Singapore’s largest share manipulation scheme between 2012 and 2013 involving three penny stocks: Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital (now Attilan Group) and LionGold.
The eventual collapse of these counters – collectively referred to as BAL – in October 2013, had wiped out some $8 billion in market value.
Touching specifically on a buy order for 10 million Blumont shares – Soh pointed out that Ken Tai, a broker who was supposedly a member of his inner circle had put in an order to buy 4 million shares within the span of 19 minutes.
The way he sees it, there was “no apparent reason” for Tai’s move. However, he said that Tai had “reverse engineered” his version of this story by saying that Quah had been the one who instructed him to make this move.
“It is an incredible reason,” said Soh who flagged that Tai had previously told that court that Soh had been the one to give him instructions on trades of Blumont.
The court heard that Soh’s interest in Blumont had started sometime in the early 2000s when Neo Kim Hock – an associate of his – had taken over the company. At that time, the company was operating under the name of Adroit Innovations.
His knowledge on LionGold meanwhile, was more recent, around mid 2007. The company was then called Asia Tiger and Soh came to know of it once he started coming back to Singapore more frequently.
As for Asiasons, Soh reckons he came to know it when it was still known as Integra around 2007 to 2008. At that time the company was going through a period of shareholders’ tussle, and Soh “helped them with some organisations and proxies to fight the hostile”.
Sreenivasan then asked Soh if he had been involved in the opening of trading accounts before 2008.
“No, I was not involved,” he replied.
SEE:Richard Chan, John Soh's blue-eyed boy, ends up saddled with $1.1 mil in trading losses
“I would not know,” he added, when asked why these accounts had been opened.
Sreenivasan’s cross-examination of Soh also touched upon his interaction and relationship with some of the prosecution’s witnesses.
One such person that was discussed was Peter Chen Hing Woon, LionGold’s former director of business and corporate development director.
Accounts under the names of Chen and his former girlfriend of twenty years Ung Hooi Leng were allegedly used to trade shares by Soh and Quah.
Once dubbed a “key wingman” to Soh, Chen had provided legal services and had helped run business development at LionGold.
Chen had in his conditioned statement, spoken of how he was told to open bank and trading accounts with various brokerages under his own name. This was done with the understanding that the accounts would be used by Soh to trade shares.
“I had hoped that doing him this favour would lead to Soh providing me opportunities to elevate my standing in the corporate world and to engage me for legal work subsequently,” Chen had told the court.
Soh told the court that he had gotten acquainted with Chen through the Ung family who helped him in 1985 when he was going through some troubles.
“I felt I owed it to them to repay this debt of gratitude,” he said.
According to Soh, Chen quit his legal practice to join Ung’s firm and later went on to become the general counsel of KFC – which Soh had links to.
While working with Ung, Chen did all the leg work and paper work, while Ung did the networking. She managed to win over several high net worth clients, several of whom were friends of Neo.
Ung was supposedly the dominant person in this relationship and had been the one to keep track of their finances in both the personal and settings.
Being closer to the younger Ung, Soh recalls she was quite devastated when she broke up with Chen.
As such he said he was “very surprised” when Chen said he was unclear about when his relationship with Ung had started and ended. “You don’t forget [this things] with someone you have been with like that for 20 years, unless you’ve had 20 relationships,” he chuckled.
When pressed on the relevance of this to the case – he said that many trading accounts that had been opened and operated by Ung had continued to be active.
A lazy practice
Soh also touched upon the evidence of certain witnesses’ who were brokers. They said Soh gave trading instructions for accounts held in the names of the associates and no third-party authorisation forms were signed.
Drawing reference to evidence from Ng Kit Kiat, a remisier at OCBC Securities, Soh said he had always maintained that his advice should be endorsed by the client before a trade is administered.
“I don’t want to bear any financial or legal risk, please check with your client,” was what Soh used to tell Ng. He thought this to be a standard practice each time he spoke to the remisiers, and said it’s possible that not checking may have been a “lazy practice that after a while many of them took”.
Soh also addressed allegations from Ong Kah Chye, a former Maybank Kim Eng Securities dealer, who said he had taking instructions from Soh.
“If I were truly giving instructions, I would have maxed out the accounts, according to the prosecution’s case,” he remarked.
Soh as aggrieved by Ong’s prediction that he would “likely” have been giving instructions since he had called four minutes before a trade was made in one instance.
“I am disappointed in him. I am calling him one of the liars because of his experience,” he said.
The trial resumes on May 21 with Sreenivasan continuing his examination-in-chief of Soh.
