Witness admits to ‘front running’ practices in Singapore penny stock crash trial

The first witness of the trial over 2013 penny stock crash which mopped out S$8 billion (RM24 billion) from the Singapore share market today admitted that he had practiced “front running” while placing share orders.

It is understood that “front running” is a prohibited practice of entering into an equity trade to capitalise on advance knowledge of a large pending transaction that will influence the price of the underlying security.

Ng Kit Kiat, a remisier with Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Securities Pte Ltd (OSPL) since 2000, admitted doing it using his wife account after receiving trading instructions from Quah Su-Ling, one of the accused person.

The admission was made by Ng while he was cross-examined by Quah’s counsel Philip Fong Yeng Fatt of Eversheds Harry Elias LLP on the fourth day of the trial before High Court Judge Hoo Sheau Peng.

Fong highlighted two occasions in 2013 in which Ng had placed orders ahead of orders for similar stocks instructed by Quah and another accused person, Soh Chee Wen who is also known as John Soh.

Ng who was called in as the first witness on the second day of the joint trial for the duo, admitted the “tail-gating” activities after initially denying it.

“Quah Su-Ling had called me to give an order, most of the time, or almost all the time, I would key in that already. But sometimes she will ask me to hold it a while, hold it a while, and she would say, “Okay, now do it”. Sometimes like that,” he said.

However, counsel Fong stressed that: “But the whole point, Mr Ng, remains that after Ms Quah had given you the instructions, you keyed in your wife’s account first, before keying in Ms Quah’s order.”

Under cross-examination, Ng a remisier for 40 years also agreed that the market information shared between brokers could help shove stock prices.

A prosecution witness, Ng was the trading representative (TR) for six clients during the period of August 2012 to October 2013, whereby two of the clients were Quah and Goh Hin Calm.

Goh was the third accused person who had pleaded guilty to two of six charges of aiding and abetting Soh and Quah, on March 20, 2019.

Ng also told the court that he took instructions from the accused person ”Peter Chew”, whom he denied knowing as John Soh before the crash, and Quah on trades of Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital and LionGold Corp.

The trial for Soh and Quah who have been charged with orchestrating a massive fraud to manipulate the market over the three shares between August 2012 and October 2013,  is adjourned to April 22.

Explaining on the adjournment, Soh’s counsel Narayanan Sreenivasan, of K&L Gates Straits Law LLC said : “Half way through the witness’ cross examination there are certain things that the witness said has triggered the prosecution’s obligation to disclose more materials to us.

“They have disclosed that there are new statements from the witness. The adjournment is for us to consider what those statements are and see which area of cross examination may have to be reopened,” he told Bernama at the end of today’s proceeding.

Bernama

29 March 2019