OK Lim told CAD officer: ‘We did not plan to cheat banks for financing’

LIM Oon Kuin, founder of Hin Leong Trading (HLT), told a police officer who was investigating allegations against him following a police report lodged by HSBC that the company did not plan to cheat the banks for financing.

“We did not plan to cheat banks for financing. It is common for oil companies to submit sales contracts to the banks for financing based on verbal confirmations. This is to get faster cash flow,” the fallen oil tycoon had said during an interview on Jul 17, 2020, with Sim Wan Lin, an officer attached to the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD)‘s private institutional fraud division.

Sim was reading out Lim’s statement from that interview at the State Court on Tuesday (Jun 13) during an examination-in-chief by deputy public prosecutor Christopher Ong. Sim, who was at that time a senior investigating officer at the CAD, is the prosecution’s tenth witness in the trial that began on Apr 11.