Investors caught in 2013 crash may finally get the answers

INVESTORS caught by the 2013 penny stock crash may finally get the answers they have been waiting for.

With trial dates expected to be announced shortly, Singapore’s High Court could soon hear arguments about “wash trading”, forced selling and who held the control over almost 200 trading accounts as it gets set to try the three individuals implicated in the saga.

The historic trial – prosecutors have described the investigations as Singapore’s largest securities fraud probe – will take place on a scale rarely seen in market-related cases.

The defendants are looking at more than 370 charges altogether: Malaysian businessman John Soh Chee Wen faces 189 charges, former Ipco International chief executive Quah Su-Ling faces 178 and former interim Ipco CEO Goh Hin Calm faces six. Those charges relate to allegations that they manipulated the stocks of Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital (now called Attilan Group) and LionGold Corp (collectively known as BAL).

Those counters climbed more than 800% in a span of nine months before crashing on Oct 4, 2013, sparking a rout of penny stocks on the Singapore Exchange.

According to court documents from recent committal hearings, prosecutors have lined up 67 witnesses and intend to prove that the defendants controlled 189 trading accounts held by 59 corporate and individual account holders in 20 financial institutions (FIs). The state will seek to show that Soh and Quah allegedly instructed numerous trading representatives to trade BAL shares between those accounts, creating artificial liquidity and driving up share prices in a practice known as wash trading.

Prosecutors plan to argue that the defendants used the allegedly false market for the BAL shares to dishonestly obtain credit from Goldman Sachs International and Interactive Brokers (IB), which was used to purchase more BAL shares to further manipulate the