Hin Leong oil tycoon OK Lim gets jail term cut in appeal in US$111.7 million case
Source by : CNA Digital NEWS Hub
04 Mar 2026 10:01 AM
Hin Leong oil tycoon OK Lim gets jail term cut in appeal in US$111.7 million case
The High Court rejected his appeal against conviction but allowed his appeal against his sentence of 17-and-a-half years.
Hin Leong oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin leaves the State Courts on Nov 18, 2024. (File photo: CNA/Jeremy Long)
SINGAPORE: The founder of failed oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading, 84-year-old Lim Oon Kuin, had his jail term cut by four years after a partially successful appeal against his conviction and sentence in a criminal case.
The High Court on Wednesday (Mar 4) rejected his appeal against conviction but allowed his appeal against his sentence of 17-and-a-half years. Justice Hoo Sheau Peng said this sentence, when considering his age and the fact he was unlikely to reoffend, was crushing, even with remission.
She reduced it to 13-and-a-half years. Lim, who is better known as OK Lim, listened to proceedings via a Mandarin interpreter in a wheelchair, with his eyes closed.
Justice Hoo rejected submissions by the defence, led by Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, that judicial mercy ought to be exercised in this case, with reference to the case of Mr Ong Beng Seng.
She found the analogy drawn by the defence to be "misguided" and said Lim's case was not an exceptional one to warrant judicial mercy as Mr Ong's was. The prisons have noted his fall risk and will make the necessary arrangements for him in jail, Justice Hoo said.
Mr Singh successfully asked for four weeks' adjournment for Lim to consider the written judgment and for a medical appointment for Lim as he sustained a fall late last year and now has difficulty focusing visually.
Lim remains on bail of S$2 million until then, furnished by his wife.
The patriarch was convicted in a trial of cheating the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and abetting forgery.
The case involved two bogus transactions for the sale of oil with China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corporation and Unipec Singapore, and the submission of forged documents that led HSBC to disburse millions of dollars in loans to Hin Leong.
This amounted to at least US$111.7 million (S$150 million), based on the three charges that the prosecution went ahead with out of the more than 100 charges that Lim faced.
The prosecution said Lim, a "legend in Singapore's oil industry", had orchestrated one of the most serious cases of trade financing fraud ever prosecuted in Singapore through his employees.
The company was one of the largest oil trading companies in Asia until its sudden collapse in April 2020.
On Wednesday, Justice Hoo rejected most of the defence's submissions regarding errors purportedly made by the lower court judge. However, she agreed to some of them.
She found that the principal district judge had erred in according weight to the factor that Lim's actions had a potential impact on the oil trading sector. She said there is no basis to infer that this happened, based on a joint statement by three government agencies.
Justice Hoo also agreed with the defence that the jail term reduction given by the principal district judge for Lim's restitution for one of the charges was inadequate.
Lim was also embroiled in a civil trial brought by liquidators against the Lim family. This concluded after Lim and his two children consented to a judgment of US$3.5 billion being entered against them.
Lim and his children were declared bankrupt in December 2024 following the judgment.
Lim's daughter, Lim Huey Ching, is currently on trial for obstructing justice.
She is accused of instructing an IT manager at Hin Leong Trading to ensure that deleted items on the company's servers were not recoverable, and that previous back-ups must be disposed of permanently.
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