SINGAPORE; The grandson of former oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin, better known as OK Lim, has failed in a bid to prevent a freehold condominium in Tanglin worth more than S$4.5 million from being included in his aunt’s bankruptcy estate.
The property is located in Chelsea Gardens in Walshe Road, which is known for its Victorian-inspired architecture and spacious unit layouts.
Denzel Pak Juin Tern, OK Lim’s grandson and nephew of Lim Huey Ching, sued the private trustees of his aunt’s bankruptcy estate, arguing that the property should be protected from creditors because it was held on trust for his late mother, Lim Huey Yih, who was Huey Ching’s sister.
Pak therefore argued that the property should be administered as part of his late mother’s estate rather than Huey Ching’s bankruptcy estate.
Private trustees in bankruptcy are licensed insolvency practitioners appointed by the court to administer a bankrupt person’s estate. They take control of the individual’s assets, oversee repayments to creditors and supervise the bankrupt person’s conduct.
Although Huey Ching is the condominium’s sole registered owner and OK Lim financed its acquisition, Pak claimed that his mother, who died in June 2017, was its sole beneficial owner.
Pak claimed there was an oral agreement between the two sisters and OK Lim in 2000 under which Huey Ching would hold the property on trust for Huey Yih. Their father would initially pay for the property, with Huey Yih repaying him later.
However, Judicial Commissioner Low Siew Ling found that the case was “fraught with inconsistencies from the outset”.
“The Lims’ (in particular, Huey Ching’s, and OK Lim’s) attempts to explain them away only multiplied them – their answers contradicted themselves or each other, were belied by objective documentary evidence and, when the documents ran out, retreated into evasion and implausible excuses,” according to the Nov 5 judgment.
The High Court found that the lawsuit was ultimately brought “not to vindicate any proprietary right of the late Huey Yih or Pak in the property, but (as) a last-ditch attempt to place the property beyond the reach of Huey Ching’s creditors”.
Quoting Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion, the judge wrote: “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.”
This is the second reported failed attempt by the Lim family to claim that assets were held on trust in an effort to shield them from creditors.
In 2025, OK Lim’s granddaughter Michelle Lim failed to prevent three AIA Singapore insurance policies worth more than half a million dollars from being included in the bankruptcy estate of her father, former Hin Leong Trading director Lim Chee Meng, who is the brother of Huey Ching and Huey Yih.
High Court Judicial Commissioner Mohamed Faizal found insufficient evidence that Chee Meng had intended to create a trust over the three policies for his daughter’s sole benefit before his bankruptcy.
He found that the documentary evidence relied on by Michelle comprised “either self-interested representations” or “mere assertions”.
In Pak’s case, the High Court found that the evidence provided by OK Lim and Huey Ching about the alleged agreement for Huey Yih to become the property’s beneficial owner consisted of “bare and unverifiable assertions that were unsupported by any contemporaneous records”.
“Neither was able to produce any incidental documentation or other evidence in writing, such as a WhatsApp message or e-mail, that recorded the alleged agreement for Huey Ching to hold the property on trust for (Huey Yih),” the judge said.
Instead, the available documentary evidence “overwhelmingly” suggested that Huey Ching held both the legal and beneficial interest in the property.
The judge found that Huey Ching had signed the sale and purchase agreement, the property was registered in her name, and the mortgage was taken out solely in her name. Mortgage payments were also made from a bank account of which she was a joint account-holder.
Huey Ching continued to arrange payment of the property’s management corporation strata title (MCST) fees and property tax at least until 2024, the judge noted.
In addition, the judge found that Huey Yih had not repaid OK Lim for the property using dividends she allegedly received in 2015 as a shareholder of two ship-owning companies owned by the Lim family. This was 18 years after the property was purchased.
“Even after accounting for property taxes and MCST charges, the numbers still do not tally as the sum of the dividends is $120,356 in excess of all the expenses flowing from the purchase of the property,” the judge noted.
The judge also highlighted another inconsistency in Huey Ching’s evidence.
After Huey Yih’s death, the schedule of assets filed in 2018 by the administrators of her estate, Huey Ching and their mother, Tan Sook Eng, did not include the property, despite the Lim family’s claim that Huey Yih had been its beneficial owner since 2000.
However, in 2021, after the judicial managers-turned-liquidators of Hin Leong obtained a Mareva injunction to freeze the Lim family’s worldwide assets up to a value of US$3.5 billion, Huey Ching listed the property in court documents as being “held solely by her with no indication of any trust”.
Then, in 2024, shortly before filing for bankruptcy, Huey Ching “did a volte-face and formally disclaimed beneficial ownership of the property”.
She claimed that she had “inadvertently” included the property in the 2021 court documents and had changed her position after being “reminded” by Pak that Huey Yih was its beneficial owner.
The judge agreed with the private trustees in bankruptcy, who were represented by TSMP Law and Rev Law, that Huey Ching’s explanations for changing her position in 2024 were “self-serving and internally inconsistent”.
“Ms Lim had a tendency to fall back on purported legal advice to explain her previous inconsistent positions. Yet conspicuously, no evidence of any such legal advice was ever produced, nor were the lawyers she named ever approached or called as witnesses to corroborate her claims,” the judge added. - Straits Times/ANN
