The former head of shipowner Xihe Holdings is facing a litany of additional criminal charges in Singapore over the collapse of oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading.
On Thursday, Singapore's public prosecutor reportedly filed an additional 105 charges against Lim Oon Kuin stemming from $2.23bn in allegedly fraudulent disbursements from Hin Leong, potentially leaving banks with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Lim was already facing 25 forgery-related charges filed in April. The new charges include 68 charges related to cheating, 36 for conspiracy to commit forgery and one conspiracy to forge a valuable security.
He was said to have deceived at least 14 banks, including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp and Societe Generale, into believing Hin Leong had entered into contracts with BP Singapore.
He was also accused of abetting and conspiring with Hin Leong staff to obtain false oil quality inspection documents and to forge a bill of lading.
Lim's business empire, which includes ship operator Ocean Tankers in addition to Xihe Holdings, Hin Leong and Ocean Bunkering, collapsed last year when the oil price collapsed amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the Saudi Arabia-Russia price war.
In March, Hin Leong was wound up after it failed to restructure $4bn in debt following the crash.
Last year, prosecutors first charged Lim with two counts of abetment of forgery for the purpose of cheating and added 23 more in April.
Since, the Xihe Holdings fleet has been slowly pared down in piecemeal sales beginning last spring.
VesselsValue shows 67 ships sold by the company since July 2020, nearly all with the price undisclosed and a handful en bloc transactions or auctions.
Most recently, the 74,000-dwt Hong Ze Hu and Dong Ting Hu (both built 2007) were sold at auction by a bank for $9.65m, data from the ship valuation service shows.
VesselsValue data shows Xihe still owns 74 ships, including 66 tankers, most of them handysizes or smaller.
It pegs the fleet value at $1.14bn.
According to both Reuters and the Financial Times, both Lim and BP declined to comment.
Reuters said the judge increased Lim's bail by $745,525 (SGD 1m) to $3m.
