Businessman Soh Chee Wen files motion in S'pore High Court

Singapore

MALAYSIAN businessman Soh Chee Wen has filed a criminal motion in the High Court of Singapore that will be heard on Wednesday morning, according to the Supreme Court's schedule for the week.

The respondent in the hearing is the public prosecutor. Justice Chao Hick Tin will hear the case. It is not clear from the public records what the case is about.

Mr Soh was reported to have been questioned by investigators into the 2013 penny stock collapse, in which sharp drops in the prices of a handful of counters precipitated massive selloffs in smaller-sized counters on the Singapore exchange.

The Singapore investigation, which is being undertaken by the police white-collar crime-fighting unit Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) and by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, is still ongoing, and no charges have been filed.

At the heart of the penny stock rout were three counters - Asiasons Capital, Blumont Group and LionGold Corp - which collapsed on a single day in October 2013, after having climbed substantially in the months before. At least 13 other people and a number of additional companies have since been targeted by investigators.

Mr Soh, who started out as a direct-selling entrepreneur but later cut his teeth restructuring troubled companies, was once a prominent deal-maker in Malaysia and Singapore, where he controlled Ipco International and Inno-Pacific Holdings, which is now called Innopac Holdings.

He stepped away from those companies around 1999, when Malaysia put out a warrant for his arrest over allegations regarding some trades on the Kuala Lumpur bourse; in 2007, he pleaded guilty to abetting acts of fraud related to those transactions.