Soh fails to get permission to travel, wants light shed on penny stock saga
Leu Siew Ying, The Edge Singapore
1 February 2016
Things did not go well for John Soh Chee Wen last week.
Besides his attempt to have his passport returned being dismissed, he found
himself being publicly named in open court by Deputy Public Prosecutor Gordon
Oh as the likely mastermind behind the spectacular rise and fall of Asiasons
Capital (now Attilan Group), Blumont Group and LionGold Corp.
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Leu Siew Ying, The Edge Singapore
1 February 2016
Things did not go well for John Soh Chee Wen last week. Besides his attempt to have his passport returned being dismissed, he found himself being publicly named in open court by Deputy Public Prosecutor Gordon Oh as the likely mastermind behind the spectacular rise and fall of Asiasons Capital (now Attilan Group), Blumont Group and LionGold Corp.
“I don’t know whether I ought to feel flattered or insulted. It’s not humanly possible to plan all the things that happened,” he tells The Edge Singapore. He adds that he is eager to continue working with the Commercial Affairs Department to get to the bottom of the matter. “The whole world wants to know what happened between Oct 1 and 7 (2013). How can such a crash happen? What caused it? Who are the beneficiaries? I sincerely want to find out,” he says. “I am very motivated to work with the CAD in the most transparent way. Let light be shed on the matter.”
Soh is neither a director nor an employee of any of the three companies in question. He is, however, an adviser to the chairman of LionGold. On April 2, 2014, as investigations by CAD got underway, his passport was impounded. Since then, Soh has recorded 800 pages of statements covering 2,000 questions.
Soh tried several times to have his passport returned, but CAD rejected each of his requests. Two weeks ago, he filed a criminal motion with the High Court to be allowed to travel from Feb 6 to 23. The reasons he offered were that he wanted to visit his 81-year-old mother, who is bedridden with a spinal injury, and that he wished to attend his son’s wedding on Feb 20.
On Jan 27, the High Court dismissed Soh’s criminal motion. After the hearing, Soh told The Edge Singapore that he felt it was unfair for him to have been denied permission to leave the country. “I am flabbergasted. I fully expected my application to be allowed,” he says.
The way he tells it, CAD has questioned him only twice in the last seven months. And, one of those occasions was after he filed the criminal motion. “[On Jan 21], after I had filed my application, they called me up. It was a two-hour session. They questioned me for one hour,” he grumbles. He says his last session with investigators prior to that took place last June, when he was subjected to two full hours of questioning.
The real blow Soh suffered, however, was being named by the authorities as the central player in the penny stock saga. On top of that, details of how he left Malaysia in 1999 while under investigation for fraudulent trading were brought up by CAD to support its assertion that he is a flight risk. “There would, in fact, be no incentive for the applicant to remain in jurisdiction, given the prospects of prosecution,” Oh said in his submission to the High Court.
Fortunately, with charges expected to be brought as early as September, Soh might not have long to wait to fully explain himself. In the meantime, according to the lead investigator’s affidavit, Soh is receiving RM100,000 ($34,300) a year from The Lakeview Club in Malaysia for providing advice to its management on marketing, public relations and branding. Soh has also now taken up a key role at a company called Dongshan Group, where he is said to earn $3,000 a month.