SINGAPORE, May 31 — A total of seven witnesses were cross-examined on the second day of the committal hearing involving Malaysian businessman John Soh Chee Wen at the Singapore High Court today.
Soh’s charges are in relation to the collapse of the share prices of Asiasons Capital Ltd, Blumont Group Ltd and LionGold Corp in October 2013, which in turn caused the collapse of penny stocks in Singapore about four years ago.
Since the committal hearing started yesterday, a total of nine out of 13 witnesses have been called to testify under oath and cross-examined including today’s seven witnesses.
The nine are part of the 13 witnesses that have been allowed to be cross-examined from a total of 67 witnesses that were called for the committal hearings to determine if a trial should proceed against Soh and two others.
The other two, seen with Soh in the defendants’ dock was IPCO International chief executive officer (CEO) Quah Su-Ling and former IPCO interim CEO Goh Hin Calm, who were alleged to have manipulated the three penny stocks.
However, Soh is still in custody while Quah, who faces 178 charges, is out on bail of S$4 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 Stock Exchange.
All the witnesses were engaged by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
In Singapore, a committal procedure is the process by which a defendant or defendants are charged with a serious offence under the criminal justice system. The committal procedure is also known as a preliminary hearing.
Earlier today during the start of the proceedings, High Court assistant registrar James Elisha Lee Han Leong ordered that Section 190 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) governing the restrictions against media reporting to be lifted.
“This order (lifting of restrictions) is to be applied to all the proceedings moving forward,” he said, adding that this also includes the first day of the committal hearing on Wednesday.
It is understood that committal hearings are usually a closed proceedings, meaning witnesses’ testimonies and applications cannot be reported by the media under Section 190 the CPC.
Yesterday saw the first two witnesses who were a stock market expert and the chief executive of the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre in Australia Professor Michael James Aitken and Saxo Bank’s deputy chief risk officer Peder Valentiner Boysen.
As part of the committal hearing procedure, all 13 witnesses’ verbal statements will be transcribed and endorsed by the court.
At present, Aitken, Boysen and the first witness for today’s session, Mary Ng Chi Ling, a representative from Interactive Brokers have had their statement verified by the court today.
In total, Soh will have to answer 188 charges, including seven new charges for witness tampering from February last year.
As for the rest of the 181 charges, he allegedly violated the Securities and Futures Act.
Upon conviction, the 59-year-old businessman is liable to be sentenced to 10 years for cheating while facing seven years’ imprisonment for each share manipulation charge.
Soh is represented by N. Sreenivasan, S. Balamurugan and Jason Lim of Straits Law Practice while the public prosecutors are Peter Koy, Teo Guan Siew and Lynn Tan.
Lee is expected to decide if Soh’s case will proceed to trial by tomorrow.
