SINGAPORE (Oct 14): The explosive revelations from the second tranche of witnesses in the trial of John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling, the alleged masterminds behind the 2013 penny stock crash, do not appear to be dying down.
Witness testimony has revealed that the office of IPCO International appeared to be some sort of “administration centre” for the movement of funds in the scheme Soh and Quah allegedly orchestrated.
Najib Mohamed Najib Abdul Rashid, who was IPCO’s company driver, told the court on Oct 10 that he would cash cheques made out to him by former interim CEO of IPCO Goh Hin Calm (GHC) or IPCO human resource officer Chiam May Ling (pictured above).
One such cheque dated Oct 2, 2012 was for $140,000. “I was the cheque payee, and the cheque was not crossed. The cheque was issued from a UOB bank account belonging to GHC. I recall receiving such cheques, that is, cheques issued to me which were not crossed, on a few rare occasions,” Najib said in his conditional statement.
From time to time, he would take over the duties of his colleague Jumaat Adam, and he would make cash payments to several brokerages on behalf of Quah or Goh. He clarified that he was never told whose accounts those payments were for, only the name of the brokerage employee he was supposed to pass the money to, including Jack Ng Kit Kiat from OCBC Securities, Alex Chew Keng Chiow and Gabriel Gan from DMG & Partner Securities and one “Candy” from Phillip Securities. Ng, Chew and Gan are also prosecution witnesses in the trial.
The court also heard from Chiam, who revealed that IPCO kept chequebooks belonging to, among others, one Lee Chai Huat, Wong Chin Yong (former CEO of Innopac Holdings), and Richard Chan and James Hong, whom she recalled were top management of Blumont Group and/or Magnus Energy Group.
A spreadsheet of all the bank account holders’ details and the cheques issued, along with the chequebooks, was kept in a safe in IPCO’s office. She also said she and Goh maintained and updated the spreadsheet whenever cheques were issued from these accounts.
“I have also issued cheques where no invoices are involved. I would only prepare and issue such cheques on GHC’s instructions. These cheques would either be handed to me by GHC, or he would tell me which chequebook in the IPCO safe to issue the cheque from,” she said. “I do not know how the chequebooks came to be in IPCO’s safe and why these persons allowed their chequebooks to be used.”
Goh, who was sentenced to three years’ jail on March 20 for aiding and abetting Soh and Quah, had acted as the treasurer in the scheme.
Chiam also said she did not recall whether those cheques were pre-signed, but during examination-in-chief by deputy public prosecutor Loh Hui Min, she clarified that at least some of the cheques were pre-signed.
On Oct 4, former broker Ken Tai Chee Ming admitted to manipulation of the stock market for his own gain. During cross-examination by senior defence counsel N Sreenivasan, Tai was asked repeatedly whether he had ever used the proxy accounts allegedly linked to Soh to carry out a pattern of trading that would benefit his own accounts. He answered that he “may have made money”, only to say “yes” when pressed.
Soh is accused of stock manipulation, cheating and witness tampering in relation to the October 2013 penny stock saga, when shares in three companies — Blumont, LionGold Corp and Asiasons Capital (now known as Attilan Group) — rose sharply and crashed in a matter of months. Quah, as his alleged co-conspirator, faces 178 charges of stock manipulation and cheating.
