The founder of a Singaporean oil company was sentenced Monday to 17 and a half years in prison for defrauding more than $100 million from banking giant HSBC. Lim Oon Kuin, 82, better known as OK Lim, was convicted in May in one of the most serious financial fraud cases the Southeast Asian city-state has seen. The public prosecutor had requested 20 years in prison for the octogenarian, arguing that it was “one of the most serious cases of financial fraud ever prosecuted in Singapore”. The ex-broker's defense had minimized the facts in an attempt to obtain leniency from the court, also citing his advanced age and poor state of health. The court did not accept the argument of the accused's precarious health, explaining that the Singapore Prison Service had suitable medical services.
The ex-businessman remains free, after posting bail, while his lawyers have indicated they want to appeal the sentence to the High Court. His company, Hin Leong Trading, was among Asia's largest oil trading companies until its sudden collapse in 2020. The Covid pandemic and the disruption to the black gold market it brought had precipitated the collapse of Hin Leong Trading, revealing its financial difficulties as Mr Lim sought help from the courts to protect himself from his creditors. In an affidavit consulted by AFP in 2020, he admitted that his company had not “in reality (…) no profit in recent years”after having nevertheless published a positive balance sheet in 2019. He had also admitted to having concealed 800 million dollars in losses and that his company owed nearly four billion to banks.
OK Lim took responsibility for ordering not to publish Hin Leong Trading's losses in its accounts. The ex-broker faced a total of 130 criminal charges involving hundreds of millions of dollars, but he was prosecuted and tried on only three counts: two for cheating HSBC and a third for encouraging a company executive to falsify documents. According to the indictment, OK Lim tricked HSBC into paying nearly $112 million (EUR 106 million), claiming to have entered into oil sales contracts with two companies. But the transactions were, in fact, “complete inventions, concocted according to the instructions of the accused”according to Singaporean prosecutors for whom these maneuvers “tarnished Singapore's hard-earned reputation as Asia's leading oil trade hub”.
