LIM Oon Kuin, a former oil tycoon and founder of collapsed oil trader Hin Leong Trading, was on Friday (May 10) convicted of three criminal charges after a trial that ran more than 60 days in the State Courts.

Two charges against the 82-year-old former billionaire pertained to cheating HSBC, and the third was for instigating a contracts executive of Hin Leong to forge a document for the ultimate purpose of cheating. The charges involved a total of US$111.7 million. 

The judgment was delivered in the State Courts by Judge Toh Han Li. Prosecution was led by Deputy Public Prosecutor Christopher Ong. Lim was represented by a team of lawyers from Davinder Singh Chambers. 

Lim, better known in the industry as OK Lim, faced a total of 130 criminal charges of forgery and cheating, involving a collective sum of US$2.7 billion. Prosecutors proceeded to trial on three of them.

The key thrust of the prosecution’s case was that Lim deceived HSBC through his employees by forging documents to give the lender the impression that Hin Leong had entered into two contracts for the sale of oil with Unipec and China Aviation Oil (Singapore), or CAO.

Hin Leong had submitted two invoice financing applications to get financing from HSBC for these two contracts. But the contracts were completely fictitious, the prosecutors said at the beginning of the trial.

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In the delivery of his oral judgment on Friday, Judge Toh said the prosecutors had proven the three charges “beyond a reasonable doubt”, and Lim was “accordingly convicted on the charges”.

For the two charges related to cheating, the judge found that there was dishonest intent on Lim’s part as he had directed his staff to submit documents for discounting with regard to non-existent transactions.

“The accused himself recognised (albeit in a different context) that it was ‘not correct’ to submit documents for discounting if it was not a done deal and there were no goods inside,” Judge Toh said.

For the charge related to instigating a Hin Leong employee to forge a document for the ultimate purpose of cheating, Judge Toh said he accepted the statements that former contracts executive Freddy Tan provided to the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) in June and August 2020.

Judge Toh said he accepted Tan’s statements to “reflect the correct position of what had happened” at the time – that Lim had made representations to HSBC through Hin Leong employees that a contract between Hin Leong and CAO had purportedly been entered into, with a payment due date of Apr 17, 2020.

This, Judge Toh said, deceived HSBC into disbursing about US$56.1 million to Hin Leong.

He added that the relevant issues that arose in the case included Lim’s involvement in the matters of Hin Leong and his statements to the CAD.

Other issues taken into account were matters such as who had directed Tan to prepare the e-mail contract pertaining to CAO, which was submitted with supporting documents to HSBC for discounting; who had directed the staff of Hin Leong to submit the discounting application for the bogus Unipec transaction; and whether HSBC was deceived into disbursing assets to Hin Leong on the back of the two transactions.

Judge Toh also said the significance of the reporting of the two transactions to HSBC, and whether the prosecution’s summary of facts matched up to its case at trial, were also relevant factors.

Still the ‘big boss’

One of Lim’s key arguments in court was that he had delegated the bulk of his work at Hin Leong to a group of trusted employees from 2010 – one of whom was his former personal assistant, Serene Seng.

Lim also claimed that these employees were the ones who fabricated or forged the documents that Hin Leong needed to receive financing from HSBC for the two fictitious deals.

Judge Toh said that despite this, Lim testified in court that from 2010 until the time he left Hin Leong in April 2020, the company’s heads of departments would continue to look for him for important matters as they thought he was the boss.

Lim’s claims that he had slowed down in his activities at Hin Leong since 2010 “did not accord” with evidence given by witnesses called to the stand by the prosecution, the judge noted.

Such witnesses included former Hin Leong employees such as Seng and former contracts executive Tan.  

Lim’s lawyers had, over the course of the trial, attempted to pin down inconsistencies in Seng’s testimony in court, and sought to impeach her credibility as a witness.

Judge Toh said that while Seng may have, as Lim’s personal assistant, liaised with banks from time to time, this was “completely different” from her allegedly fabricating documents to obtain financing from lenders.

He added it was “quite unfathomable” as to why she would do such things when there was no underlying contract with CAO.

The judge, however, acknowledged that Seng had not given a complete account of what had transpired in her statements to the CAD, or in the documents filed in the High Court for a civil trial that is ongoing.

To recap, Lim, along with his two children and Seng, is also facing a civil suit in the High Court, where liquidators from PwC and Hin Leong’s top creditor HSBC are suing the four individuals for US$3.5 billion. 

“It should be noted that (Seng’s) evidence in court, while implicating the accused, also implicated herself,” Judge Toh said, adding that Seng’s testimony was, in parts, “damaging to her position” in the civil trial. Her previous statements to the CAD also “did not completely exonerate” Lim, the court heard.

Judge Toh added that Lim’s claims of being a fairly hands-off honcho from 2010 did not corroborate with the testimonies of prosecution witnesses such as Hin Leong’s general manager for trading Wong See Meng, as well as Unipec Singapore’s deputy general manager Peter Li Yue. These witnesses said, among other things, Lim’s approval was required for Hin Leong’s trades.

The judge said Lim “continued to be the ‘big boss’ of Hin Leong”. “He was also actively involved in managing (Hin Leong) and continued to instruct, conduct and negotiate selected trades himself.”

“The accused himself accepted under cross-examination that, at the end of the day, he kept track of how well Hin Leong was doing financially, and the objective was for Hin Leong to be successful and making a profit,” the judge added.

He also pointed out that although checks by HSBC for the CAO and Unipec transactions did not completely follow the bank’s internal procedure, the lender would have ultimately not approved the discounting applications if it had known the underlying contracts were fictitious.

The case’s prosecutors are expected to make their submissions for sentencing by Jul 5; the defence will make its submissions by Aug 30. Replies will take till Sep 20.

Lim is expected to be sentenced on Oct 3, so his bail of S$4 million has been extended till then.

The Singapore Police Force said on Friday that Lim faces imprisonment of up to 10 years for each charge levelled against him. He will also be liable to a fine for each charge.