Hin Leong Trading hid $800M in oil losses — Singapore's biggest fraud

Hin Leong Trading was one of Asia's largest independent oil traders, founded by Lim Oon Kuin (known as OK Lim) in 1963. The Singapore-based company supplied fuel oil and diesel to ships across Asia, with annual revenues of $14 billion at its peak.

When oil prices crashed in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Saudi-Russia price war, Hin Leong's financial position collapsed. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2020, revealing that it owed $3.9 billion to banks including HSBC, DBS, and Standard Chartered.

The investigation uncovered that Hin Leong had been hiding massive trading losses for years. The company had lost approximately $800 million on oil derivatives trades, and founder OK Lim had instructed employees to fabricate financial statements to hide the losses from banks and auditors. The fraud involved creating fake sales contracts, forging documents, and reporting non-existent profits.

OK Lim and his son Lim Chee Meng were arrested and charged with fraud. The scandal was one of the largest in Singapore's corporate history, and the banks involved faced billions in losses. The case exposed how a family-run oil trader could operate for years with virtually no external oversight of its trading activities.