THE former chief executive of a company previously listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) was sentenced to nine years’ jail on Tuesday (Nov 7) for offences including being part of a scheme to manipulate the price of the firm’s shares.

Lee Wan Sing, 47, who was the CEO of steel bar trading firm Oriental Group Limited (OGL) from 2014 to May 2016, also misappropriated S$500,000 and used the cash to fund share purchases linked to the scheme. He did not make any restitution.

The prosecution said that the scheme, which began either in October 2014 or earlier, continued from Apr 8, 2015, to Jan 14, 2016. This was referred to as the “relevant period” in court.

As at Mar 8, 2016, about S$3.2 million was owed to trading firms for trades carried out under accounts linked to the scheme. This amount has since been fully paid off.

OGL’s shares were listed on the Catalist board of the SGX from Feb 1, 2010, until the firm’s liquidation in May 2019, court documents stated.

The cases involving several other people linked to the firm are still pending.

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They include former investor relationship manager Chong Yong Von, 40; Lee Ong, 49, who used to be OGL’s group financial controller; and Tan Seow Juay, 65, one of the firm’s shareholders.

A fourth person, Chan Geok Leng, also known as Allan Chan, who was a shareholder of OGL and the sole director of another firm called GL Engineering, died in October 2021.

Deputy public prosecutors Ryan Lim and Gan Ee Kiat told the court that over a period of at least 15 months, Lee Wan Sing and several others carried out the scheme to artificially push up the price of OGL shares through a system of coordinated trading.

He had also led the overall management of the ruse, giving trading directions to his co-conspirators and recruiting others to lend their trading accounts to him.

The DPPs stressed that the scheme had caused severe market distortion. They said: “The scheme was extensive and effective. At least 50 trading accounts belonging to nine persons were used to conduct trades... including 40 accounts which were opened solely for this purpose.”

Between Apr 8, 2015, and Jan 14, 2016, 339 million OGL shares were traded through these accounts, amounting to 79.8 per cent of the total volume traded.

Over the same period, OGL’s share price steadily rose by over 300 per cent, against the backdrop of a falling Straits Times Index.

The prosecution said that funds were also needed to pay for these trades, and Lee obtained the monies in three fraudulent ways.

In or around early 2015, he took S$500,000 in cash belonging to OGL that was stored in a safe in his office.

He also obtained credit facilities totalling S$1.4 million from banks by pledging his OGL shares as security, concealing the fact that their value had been artificially inflated.

He then used the facilities to obtain funds for the scheme.

The DPPs added that he also worked with Chan to cause OGL to disburse a total of S$650,000 to GL Engineering for fictitious purchases. The money was then used for the scheme.

Lee took steps to hide his illegal conduct from OGL’s auditors by creating false documents, including sales orders and tax invoices.

The scheme was discovered in early 2016, and Lee left Singapore in May 2017.

He was arrested in Malaysia in December 2021 and brought back to Singapore. THE STRAITS TIMES