Penny stock mastermind M'sian John Soh jailed 36 years
SYDI ALIF28 Dec 2022 12:47pm
John Soh - pic from sharetisfy
The 62-year old prominent Malaysian businessman was involved with the biggest market manipulation case in Singapore that wiped out S$8 billion from the Singapore stock market in 2013.
Soh and his is ex-partner and accomplice Quah Su-Ling were both sent to prison, but the latter was sent to 20 years imprisonment.
Quah, 57, was the former Singapore Exchange (SGX)-listed IPCO International CEO, according to Channel News Asia.
Together, they had been convicted of 180 and 169 charges respectively after a long-running trial spanning almost 200 days and involving close to 100 prosecution witnesses.
From August 2012 to October 2013, Quah and Soh artificially inflated the share prices of three penny stocks: Blumont, Asiasons and LionGold.
With 106 charges for deceiving financial institutions by concealing their involvement when giving instructions to make orders and trades, Soh was also found guilty of witness tampering by asking four witnesses to lie to investigators after the stock market crash.
When the share prices of the three companies crashed erasing S$8 billion in market capitalisation from SGX, the scheme unravelled on Oct 4, 2013.
While the prosecution had sought 40 years for Soh and 19-and-a-half years for Quah behind the bars, a third co-accused, 59-year-old Goh Hin Calm was sentenced to three years in jail in 2019 after pleading guilty to two charges of false trading and market rigging.
