SINGAPORE, March 28 — The first witness was called yesterday on the second day of the 2013 penny stock crash trial involving Malaysian businessman Soh Chee Wen and his partner Quah Su-Ling.

Ng Kit Kiat, a remisier with Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Securities Pte Ltd (OSPL) since 2000, was questioned by Deputy Public Prosecutor Peter Koy before High Court Judge Hoo Sheau Peng.

Also known as Jack Ng, he will be crossed-examined by Soh’s counsel Narayanan Sreenivasan, of K&L Gates Straits Law LLC and Quah’s counsel Philip Fong Yeng Fatt of Eversheds Harry Elias LLP, today.

In his cautioned statement, Ng said he was the trading representative (TR) for six clients during the period of August 2012 to October 2013, whereby two of the clients were Quah and Goh Hin Calm.

Advertisement

Goh was Soh’s co-accused who had pleaded guilty to two of six charges of aiding and abetting Soh and Quah, on March 20, 2019.

During that period, Ng said almost all the trades that he carried out in those accounts were instructed by Quah and one ‘Peter Chew’, who he had later found out was Soh.

Asked by Koy how he recognised ‘Peter Chew’ as Soh, Ng said Soh’s photos appeared almost every day in the Chinese newspapers in the 1980’s.

Advertisement

Ng is believed to be referring to a series of news reports in 1984 which were related to Soh’s bankruptcy, a year before the Pan-Electric Industries fiasco, a case which forced a three-day closure of stock exchanges in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. 

Ng said he first met ‘Peter Chew’ at LionGold’s office at Mohammed Sultan Road here where he was originally set to meet Quah to discuss two other accounts which had outstanding contra losses.

“JS (John Soh) greeted me. He asked me “what is the problem”,” said Ng, adding that Soh told him not to worry and that he would “settle everything” for him.

“I then asked him for his contact number, and JS gave me two contact numbers. I realised that the contact numbers JS gave me were the numbers Peter Chew used to contact me.

“I asked JS if he was Peter Chew. JS just smiled at my question. After that, JS said he had a meeting, and left. Before he left, he told me ‘don’t worry Jack, I will settle’,” he added.

Ng also recalled that when opening her account, Quah told him that she was a “contra player” and initially “was not a very active trader”, but she would call him almost every day to place orders and it went on until August 2012.

This trading pattern continued up till the crash of the shares of Blumont Group Ltd, Asiasons Capital Limited and LionGold Corp Ltd, in early October 2013, said Ng.

Soh and Quah pleaded not guilty last Monday to 189 and 178 charges, respectively.

The first tranche of the trial over the penny stock crash, which cleansed S$8 billion (about RM24 billion) from the Singapore share market, is expected to last till mid-May this year. — Bernama