Convicted market manipulators John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling have failed in their appeal for less jail time, after Singapore’s apex court upheld their original prison terms imposed in 2022 for orchestrating the country’s largest securities fraud.
In a decision delivered on Wednesday (March 18), the Court of Appeal affirmed that the custodial terms – 36 years for Soh and 20 years for Quah – were warranted given the scale, sophistication and market impact of their offences.
A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justices Tay Yong Kwang and Andrew Phang considered whether the sentences imposed by High Court Judge Hoo Sheau Peng should be revised.
The verdict brings to a close a long-running legal saga that culminated in the pair’s convictions four years ago for manipulating the shares of Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital and Liongold Corp – collectively referred to in court proceedings as the BAL stocks.
At the heart of the case was an elaborate scheme executed between August 2012 and October 2013, during which Soh and Quah orchestrated trades through 189 accounts across 20 financial institutions.
Many of these institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Interactive Brokers and Saxo Bank, had been misled into extending financing, enabling a web of coordinated transactions that artificially inflated the BAL stocks and created a false market.
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The scheme ended abruptly when the three counters collapsed on Oct 4, 2013, wiping out more than $8 billion in market value.
Soh’s jail term is “proportionate to his overall level of criminality”, Menon said. “In terms of the first appellant’s aggregate sentence, we do not think the sentence of 36 years imprisonment can be said to be manifestly excessive.”
Soh “had carefully coordinated the scheme, which was of a massive scale, with the aim of subverting the very purpose for which the SFA (Securities and Futures Act) was introduced”, the Chief Justice said.
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“He caused very significant harm to the market and its stakeholders. In doing so, he had also severely harmed Singapore’s reputation as a financial hub.”
Turning to Quah, Menon rejected her lawyer’s argument that she was merely “a Girl Friday” for Soh. “It is not accurate to state that the second appellant’s culpability was lower than the first appellant’s in all aspects.”
The Court of Appeal did, however, dismiss the prosecution’s bid to increase Quah’s sentence on account of her lawyer’s earlier claims that the High Court judge was biased against his client.
“In the final analysis, we do not consider it fair for us to do so,” Menon said. “This is because counsel for the second appellant has informed the court that these allegations were advanced on his own initiative and without the second appellant’s instructions.”
Quah was represented by N Sivananthan from David Nayar and Associates. Among other things, Sivananthan had said in appeal proceedings last year that Judge Hoo showed “excessive interference” in the trial and had inferred guilt on Quah after finding Soh guilty of witness tampering.
Sivananthan had acted improperly, said Menon, “not only in repeatedly casting spurious allegations against the judge, but also in his subsequent repeated attempts to downplay the severity of those allegations”.
The Court of Appeal ordered Sivananthan to pay a personal cost order of $10,000.
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The charges against the duo involved false trading, price manipulation, deception, cheating and – in the case of Soh – witness tampering. Soh was represented by Senior Counsel N Sreenivasan of Sreenivasan Chambers LLC.
Quah began serving her 20-year sentence in October last year, right after an earlier joint appeal to overturn the convictions was dismissed.
After the verdict was delivered, she was given some time by the court to speak to her family members and friends, many of whom had come from Penang and Kuala Lumpur for the hearing.
