Ken Tai Chee Ming

Ken Tai, who was once part of John Soh's "inner circle", alleges that former SGX chief regulatory officer Richard Teng had fed Soh with information on the Commercial Affairs Department's probe on the market manipulation scandal.

SINGAPORE (Jan 31): The third tranche in the trial of John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling, the alleged masterminds behind the 2013 penny stock crash has been adjourned to after the Lunar New Year. But there was no lack of drama in the final week of proceed

In November 2012, Tai had bought his wife a Patek Philippe watch worth some $20,000 – 10 times more than his monthly salary of $2,000 just the year before.

“If after I finish with Henry, all the roll, I take out everything, what will the queue look like? It looks like – I mean, we call it ‘haunted counters’,” Tai protested. In Chinese, Tai added, they would call it "long men ke zhan" or Dragon Gate Inn.

“You did it knowing full well this is precisely what Quah wants to avoid and something that she specifically instructed you not to do,” said Quah's lawyer, Philip Fong of Eversheds Harry Elias.

Tai could be the second prosecution witness in this trial to be impeached.

The defence counsels of alleged 2013 penny stock crash masterminds John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling on Thursday crossed swords with state prosecutors over the potential impeachment of witness Ken Tai Chee Ming.

Defence counsel N Sreenivasan in court on Wednesday also confirmed that there will be a formal impeachment of Ken Tai as a witness.

“If I am churning, if I’m creating, I will admit to that,” said former abettor-turned-prosecution witness Ken Tai Chee Ming.

At one point, Soh's defence counsel N Sreenivasan told the judge in exasperation: “This is not a witness whom I trust one iota.”