Singapore's $8B penny stock crash: 'treasurer' Goh Hin Calm jailed 36 months

On 20 March 2019 Goh Hin Calm, a 59-year-old Singaporean and former interim chief executive of Ipco International, was jailed for 36 months after pleading guilty to two of six abetment charges for manipulating the stocks of Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital and LionGold Corp — the three counters whose nine-month, 800-per-cent rocket ride ended in the 4 October 2013 crash that wiped about $8 billion from the Singapore market.

Prosecutors said Goh played two roles in a scheme allegedly orchestrated by Malaysian businessman John Soh Chee Wen and former Ipco CEO Quah Su Ling. From as early as 2008 he opened multiple trading accounts at brokerages across Singapore in his name and his wife's, handing Soh and Quah the trading limits and credit to work the BAL shares. By 2011 he was the scheme's finance manager: more than 1,200 payments in and out of a pool of funds that at times exceeded $2 million, arranging roughly $30 million in outgoing payments on their behalf.

The prosecution — which sought three years per charge, concurrent — described the operation as 'the most audacious, extensive and injurious market manipulation scheme ever in Singapore'. When it collapsed in October 2013 the losses were massive: unpaid trading debts fell on the financial institutions holding the accounts, with over $350 million still unpaid across the 189 controlled accounts, including $1.5 million in Goh's and his wife's own accounts.

Goh's guilty plea came days before the historic trial of the alleged masterminds — Soh facing 189 charges including witness tampering, Quah 178 — which was postponed to 25 March 2019, fuelling speculation he would turn prosecution witness. Soh had been in remand since his November 2016 arrest.

Goh supplied the infrastructure a manipulation needs — accounts, credit limits and a $2-million-plus float — making him, in the prosecution's words, 'both seed funder and finance manager'.

The scheme leaned on leverage across 189 controlled accounts; when the price turned, the unpaid losses landed on the brokerages and banks holding them.

The three BAL counters had risen more than 800 per cent in nine months on manipulated volumes, a rise no fundamentals supported, before the October 2013 collapse.

Pleading guilty two weeks before trial left the masterminds' case exposed — and made Goh the first of the trio implicated to be sentenced.

Market manipulation is a logistics operation: whoever holds the accounts, the credit lines and the payment float is not a bit player — Goh was the scheme's seed funder and finance manager.

Goh's 36-month term began immediately, with the two concurrent sentences for abetment under Sections 197(1)(b) and 109 of the Penal Code. The trial of John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su Ling — Singapore's largest securities fraud investigation, with more than 370 charges between them — opened on 25 March 2019. Unpaid losses across the controlled accounts remained unresolved at the time of sentencing.