PETALING JAYA: John Soh Chee Wen, the alleged mastermind behind the collapse of Singapore penny stocks more than four years ago, will appear before a judge in Singapore tomorrow to see if his case will proceed to trial.
Held in remand since November 2016, Soh will appear before the Singapore High Court for a committal hearing where the judge will decide if the case goes to trial. If the judge decides in favour of the prosecuction, Soh is expected to go to trial by the end of the year.
“The court will decide whether to proceed and judges normally will set a date,” said a source.
Soh is slapped with 188 charges that can be broadly broken up into four main areas. Three are related to offences involving the capital markets and the fourth is on witness tampering.
He initially was to answer for 181 charges on alleged violations of the Securities and Futures Act but new charges for witness tampering were brought against Soh in February last year. Each of the share manipulation charge carries a sentence of around seven years and the charge for cheating carries a sentence of around 10 years.
He is facing those charges in relation to a the collapse of the share prices of Asiasons Capital, Blumont Group and LionGold in October 2013 that subsequently cascaded into a collapse of many penny stocks in Singapore. The episode, known as the penny stock fiasco, left a black mark in the reputation of the Singapore as a financial centre.
Soh is being represented by N. Sreenivasan, S. Balamurugan and Jason Lim of Straits Law Practice. They were appointed his lawyers in November last year after lawyers from WongPartnership discharged himself.
Soh has been unable to leave Singapore since April 2014 after his passport was impounded by the authorities who started questioning him in relation to the investigations.
He was remanded after the charges were filed against him in November 2016 -- easily making him a detainee serving the longest time in remand for commercial crimes and being denied bail. The courts in Singapore have denied bail as they view him to be a `flight risk’.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Peter Koy, Nicholas Tan and Ng Jean Ting had contended in a submission on Feb 12 that Soh “presents a real, extraordinary and immediate danger of flight”, as he “has entered and exited Singapore on multiple occasions using illegal means”.
It was reported that the prosecution pointed to witness evidence that Soh had travelled across the Singapore-Malaysia land border on an Indonesian passport.
The report said the prosecution believed there was evidence, in the form of statements made to a third party, that he planned to leave Singapore for Malaysia by boat in 2015 for Chinese New Year despite his passport having been impounded.
However persons close to Soh said that they had argued against the prosecution’s assertion of Soh planning to flee Singapore as `hearsay’ but to no avail.
Sources said that the prosecution for Singapore has called in an Australian expert witness and many local brokers to strengthen their case.
Should his case head to a full trial, the litigation is expected to take between on and one-and-a-half years.
“The case against Soh has left him with an unbelievable defence bill (given its cost),” said the source. “Financially, he has been whacked left, right and centre.”
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