SINGAPORE, June 1 — The Singapore High Court today decided that Malaysian businessman John Soh Chee Wen should stand trial on charges related to the capital market and witness tampering.

Assistant Registrar James Elisha Lee Han Leong, in delivering the decision after three days of a committal hearing, said there were sufficient grounds to proceed with a trial.

However, Lee did not mention the dates for the hearing.

Bernama was made to understand that both counsel will meet at end of this month for a Pre-Trial Conference (PTC), among others, to set the dates.

Over the three days of the committal hearing, 13 witnesses were cross-examined out of a total of 67.

Soh allegedly masterminded the collapse of the share prices of Asiasons Capital Ltd, Blumont Group Ltd and LionGold Corp in October 2013, which then "dominocally” affected most penny stocks in the Singapore Exchange.

Soh, who has been on remand since the end of 2016, has to answer 189 charges, including eight new charges of witness tampering which he faced in February last year.

As to the rest of the 181 charges, he allegedly violated the Securities and Futures Act.

With Soh in court were IPCO International chief executive officer Quah Su Ling and former IPCO interim CEO Goh Hin Calm, who are both alleged to have manipulated the three penny stocks.

At today’s hearing, the defence team also made submissions in vain to knock off eight charges involving Quah and Soh.

Soh was represented by N. Sreenivasan, S. Balamurugan and Jason Lim of Straits Law Practice, while the public prosecutors were Peter Koy, Teo Guan Siew and Lynn Tan.

Soh has been denied bail, Quah, who faces 178 charges, is out on bail of S$4 million (RM11.9 million), while Goh, who faces six charges, is on bail of S$750,000.

The crash over three trading days in October 2013 cleared up S$8 billion in shareholder value from the Singapore Exchange. — Bernama