Hin Leong founder O.K. Lim, who was to start prison sentence on April 1, has bail extended by a day
Source: Straits Times
Article Date: 02 Apr 2026
Author: Grace Leong & Shaffiq Alkhatib
Hin Leong founder Lim Oon Kuin will have to surrender at the State Courts by 3pm on April 2.
Hin Leong founder Lim Oon Kuin, who was to start his 13½-year prison sentence on April 1, has been granted a one-day bail extension.
The 84-year-old will have to surrender at the State Courts by 3pm on April 2.
In response to queries from The Straits Times, a spokesperson for the State Courts said that Lim’s counsel had submitted an application to defer the start of his sentence.
“The Court has directed that the appellant’s bail be extended until 3pm on April 2, 2026,” she said.
On March 4, the High Court allowed the former tycoon’s appeal, shaving off four years from his original sentence of 17½ years for cheating and abetting forgery.
High Court judge Hoo Sheau Peng had found that the original jail term of 17½ years was “crushing”, even with the usual one-third remission.
But on March 28, Lim was hospitalised with breathing difficulties in Gleneagles Hospital after his family found him “disoriented in the study, mumbling he had difficulty breathing”, his son, Mr Evan Lim Chee Meng, told ST on March 30.
When asked what triggered the 84-year-old’s breathing difficulties and whether Lim will report to the State Courts on April 1, Mr Evan Lim earlier said: “We are still waiting for the doctor to run more tests on him. We have no answers yet.”
ST has reached out to Mr Evan Lim for an update on his father’s condition and the one-day deferred jail sentence.
In allowing the former tycoon’s appeal, Justice Hoo had found that the district judge who sentenced Lim erred in according weight to the prosecution’s arguments that Lim’s offences had undermined public confidence in the oil trading sector.
She gave him sentencing discounts on account of substantial restitution made, as well as Lim’s age. She noted that the loss to HSBC on one of the cheating charges was almost halved, from US$56 million (S$72 million) to US$29.7 million, after Lim made restitution.
But the judge rejected Lim’s call for the court to exercise judicial mercy by imposing a one-day jail term.
Judicial mercy is the discretionary power of Singapore’s courts to impose a more lenient sentence because of exceptional mitigating circumstances. It has so far been exercised in cases where the offender is suffering from a terminal illness, and where the offender is so ill that jail time would carry a high risk of endangering his life.
Lim’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, in an appeal hearing in November 2025, had argued that there is a heightened risk of his client suffering a fall in prison that may lead to his death.
Lim, who is better known as O.K. Lim, was sentenced in November 2024 for two counts of cheating and one count of abetting forgery, in what prosecutors described as “one of the most serious cases of trade financing fraud that have ever been prosecuted in Singapore”.
He was found guilty of cheating HSBC of US$111.6 million, through Hin Leong employees, by claiming that the oil trading firm had entered into two contracts to sell oil to China Aviation Oil (Singapore) and Unipec Singapore, and then applying for discounting of these purported transactions.
Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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