The appeal hearing of convicted market manipulators Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-ling will take place from March 3-4, with defence lawyers training their guns on key prosecution witnesses in a bid to quash the crushing sentences meted out for their roles in what has come to be known as Singapore’s largest securities fraud.
Soh, an undischarged bankrupt, and Quah, his co-conspirator and girlfriend, were found guilty of manipulating the shares of Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital and Liongold Corp between August 2012 and October 2013.
After nearly 200 days of trial that lasted more than three years, Soh was convicted of 180 charges and sentenced by High Court Judge Hoo Sheau Peng on Dec 28, 2022, to 36 years in jail. Quah was found guilty of 169 charges and given 20 years behind bars.
The charges involved false trading, price manipulation, deception, cheating and — in the case of Soh — witness tampering. A total of 95 prosecution witnesses took the stand during the trial, which ended in June 2021.
Soh, also known as John, and Quah were granted a stay on execution of their sentences pending their appeal, which will be heard by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Senior Justice Andrew Phang and Justice Tay Yong Kwang.
The three counters, collectively known as BAL, crashed spectacularly in October 2013 after a massive run-up in the preceding months, wiping out more than $8 billion from the Singapore stock market.
See also: Penny stock crash appeal hearing off to bumpy start for accused
A total of 189 trading accounts belonging to 58 individuals and corporate nominees were used for trading BAL stocks before they crashed. Several financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs and Saxo Bank, were tapped to help fund the purchase of these shares.
Key individuals
According to written submissions filed with the Court of Appeal last month, lawyers representing Soh and Quah will argue that the verdicts overlooked the actions of certain individuals who had worked on their own or closely with each other to trade the shares without the full knowledge of both appellants.
They include Dick Gwee, Ken Tai, Gabriel Gan, Henry Tjoa and Leroy Lau, all of whom testified during the trial. A few of these individuals were said to have been responsible for about 90% of BAL’s trading activities while Soh was actively promoting the companies before the crash.
Gwee, in particular, was found to have made about $50 million in profits together with his family members from trading BAL shares. His counterparties in these trades included Tai, Gan and Tjoa. Some of them had regarded Gwee as a mentor and revealed during the trial that he gave them trading instructions for the three stocks.
Even so, Gwee’s involvement in the rise and collapse of the BAL shares was not a point of contention for the prosecution during the trial. He downplayed his involvement in the entire BAL saga during his time on the stand, even though other witnesses testified otherwise.
Trades carried out by Gwee were also not analysed by either one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses, Professor Michael Aitken and David White, before the trial commenced in 2019. Aitken is the founder of the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre in Australia, while White specialises in forensic financial analysis.
On his part, Tai also made hefty commissions — to the tune of about $200,000 a month at one point — from trading BAL shares. The defence counsels’ position is that he was not under orders from either Soh or Quah but that he traded for his own gain and to benefit Gwee.
Gwee, Tai, Tjoa and Gan were found to have worked in concert to trade the three stocks under what was dubbed the Manhattan House Group. This was a reference to their trading operations carried out from an office unit they had rented along Chin Swee Road.
Control
The issue of control of the multiple trading accounts will also be raised in the appeal hearing.
Soh’s lawyers will argue, among other things, that he and Quah could not have conspired to deceive financial institutions and broking houses into thinking that they were the ones who actively gave trading instructions. They will also seek to refute charges that both deceived financial institutions to get funding using BAL shares as collateral.
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The defence will also argue that Soh’s witness tampering conviction should be overturned as several of the prosecution witnesses had admitted to lying on the stand to protect themselves and Gwee.
“We are dealing with witnesses who have admitted wrongdoing. They could have been charged for having initially given false statements,” Soh’s lawyers wrote in their submissions.
“They chose to pin the blame on the appellant for changes made to their statements, rather than admit that the inconsistencies arose because they had not told the truth to the authorities.
“Finally, what the appellant is alleged to have said is ambiguous and were not clear exhortations to lie. All the witnesses ultimately testified against the appellant and incriminated him. This suggests that there was no tampering at all.”
Soh’s attempts at witness tampering came to light after Gan secretly taped his conversations with him following the crash and gave the recordings to the Commercial Affairs Department.
The defence will also seek to bring home the point that the appellants had nothing to do with the collapse of the BAL shares.
Among other things, Soh, at one point, had brought in several renowned mining executives to help build Blumont up and would not have jeopardised Liongold, which managed to make its way then into the MSCI Global Small Cap Index.
Soh, in remand since 2016, is represented by Senior Counsel N Sreenivasan and Jason Lim. Sreenivasan was managing partner of K&L Gates Straits Law before setting up his own practice, Sreenivasan Chambers, in August last year.
Quah is out on bail for $4 million and is represented by N Sivananthan, a criminal lawyer from Malaysia. She had to mount her own legal defence at the tail end of the trial in 2021 after running out of money to pay her then lawyer, Harry Elias managing partner Philip Fong.
