KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A Singapore oil magnate was sentenced Monday to 17.5 years in prison for fraud and forgery in a case that prosecutors said has tarnished the city-state’s reputation as Asia’s leading oil trading hub.
Lim Oon Kuin, 82, was convicted in May on two counts of cheating the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC) and one of abetting forgery. The court found Lim used forged documents on two bogus oil transactions to deceive HSBC into disbursing credit totaling $111.7 million, in one of the biggest cases of trade financing fraud in Singapore.
Lim, a Chinese immigrant, founded Hin Leong Trading in 1963. It grew into one of Asia’s biggest oil trading companies. It collapsed in 2020 after a failed bet that oil prices would rebound after China’s containment of COVID-19.
Judge Toh Han Li was quoted Monday by The Straits Times as saying a deterrent sentence was needed to “prevent offenses from pervading Singapore’s financial ecosystem” that could prompt banks to impose stricter compliance rules or withdraw their trade financing services.
Lim has appealed the sentence and is out on bail, the report said.
