Singapore’s public prosecutor on Thursday filed an additional 105 charges against Lim Oon Kuin, the founder of collapsed oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd, relating to $2.23 billion in fraudulent disbursements.<\/p>\n
Hin Leong, one of Asia’s largest oil traders, was wound up in March after failing to restructure some $4 billion in debt following a crash in the oil price during the coronavirus pandemic that exposed earlier financial troubles.<\/p>\n
The new charges followed 25 forgery-related charges filed against Lim last year and in April this year. They comprised 68 charges of cheating, 36 of conspiracy to commit forgery and one of conspiracy to forge a valuable security.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor told the State Court the latest charges related to $2.23 billion which was fraudulently disbursed, adding that $262 million had not been repaid.<\/p>\n
Lim allegedly deceived at least 14 banks, including ANZ, DBS, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp and Societe Generale, into believing that Hin Leong had entered contracts with BP Singapore, a unit of BP, for fuel trades between 2019 and 2020, charge sheets showed.<\/p>\n
The forgery charges were in addition to similar charges that accused Lim of abetting and conspiring with a Hin Leong employee to procure false records of oil quality inspection documents from employees of Amspec Testing Services Pte Ltd.<\/p>\n
Lim was also accused of abetting and conspiring with another Hin Leong employee to forge a bill of lading document as a valuable security in March 2020.<\/p>\n
Lim’s lawyer declined to comment on the case on Thursday. Lim has previously declined to comment to Reuters on the case. BP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The oil trading firm, set up in 1973, is owned by Lim and his children Evan Lim and Lim Huey Ching.<\/p>\n
At the hearing, the judge increased Lim’s bail amount by S$1 million ($743,000) to S$4 million. A pre-trial conference was set for Aug. 5.<\/p>\n
A Singapore court in May approved a freeze on up to $3.5 billion of Lim family assets, boosting the prospect of debt recovery from the former oil trading empire that counts some of the world’s biggest banks among its creditors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Singapore’s public prosecutor on Thursday filed an additional 105 charges against Lim Oon Kuin, the founder of collapsed oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd, relating to $2.23 billion in fraudulent disbursements. Hin Leong, one of Asia’s largest oil traders, was wound up in March after failing to restructure some $4 billion in debt following a crash in the oil price during the coronavirus pandemic that exposed earlier financial troubles. The new charges followed 25 forgery-related charges filed against Lim last year and in April this year. They comprised 68 charges of cheating, 36 of conspiracy to commit forgery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}