SINGAPORE: On Monday morning (Nov 18), disgraced oil tycoon OK Lim was slapped with a jail sentence of 17 and a half years.
In May, Lim Oon Kuin, who founded the oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading, was convicted of cheating the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and forgery in a case involving at least S$150 million.
The tycoon will appeal against the sentence, and CNA quotes his lawyer, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, saying that his $4 million bail has also been extended.
Photos from Lim’s Nov 18 court appearance show him in a wheelchair, and reports say that he was accompanied to the proceedings by a caregiver.
The embattled tycoon’s legal woes came to the fore in 2020 after the pandemic caused oil markets to plunge. By April of that year, he sought protection from creditors in the court for Hin Leong Trading.
Lim built his empire starting from a single-truck enterprise through the combination of high-risk gambles and hard work, but when oil prices plunged, the cracks in his manner of business began to show.
Documents showed at the time that the firm owed almost $4 million and that Lim had hidden $800 million in losses over previous years. He took responsibility for telling the company not to report the losses.
The collapsed company has over 20 bank creditors, including HSBC, UOB, OCBC, and DBS. HSBC was the company’s biggest lender, with Hin Leong owing it US$600 million.
The bank had sought a return of $85 million, a fraction of what it was owed.
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A few months later, the police said in a statement that Lim had been charged with abetment of forgery for cheating.
Lim eventually faced more than 100 charges.
The documents forged under Lim’s purview had resulted in at least $146.1 million in loans being disbursed by HSBC to Hin Leong Trading.
According to The Straits Times, prosecutors have characterized Lim’s case as “one of the most serious cases of trade financing fraud that have ever been prosecuted in Singapore”.
ST also reported State Courts Judge Toh Han Li as finding that the imposition of the maximum sentence was warranted since Lim “was not entitled to a sentencing discount for pleading guilty, and given the additional aggravating factor of the potential damage to the reputation of Singapore’s oil industry”.
Last year, the liquidators of Lim’s oil trading company sought to recover S$4.7 billion from the Lim family to pay off creditors. /TISG
