O.K. Lim’s daughter on trial for instructing IT staff to delete data from Hin Leong’s servers

Lim Huey Ching, the daughter of former oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin, went on trial in the State Courts on Oct 6 for instructing IT staff at Hin Leong Trading to delete data from the computer servers of the now-collapsed company.

The alleged instructions by Lim, 58, were given on April 13, 2020 – the day before PwC, Hin Leong’s newly appointed financial adviser, was to carry out a process to duplicate the information stored on the servers.

After a single charge accusing her of intending to obstruct the course of justice was read to her, Lim said softly: “I didn’t do it.”

Lim, her father and brother Evan Lim Chee Meng were directors of Hin Leong, which ran into serious financial difficulties in early 2020.

The company filed for insolvency protection on April 17, 2020.

Lim Oon Kuin, better known as O.K. Lim, was sentenced to 17½ years’ jail in November 2024 for two counts of cheating and one count of forgery in what prosecutors described as “one of the most serious cases of trade financing fraud that has ever been prosecuted in Singapore”.

He was found to have duped HSBC into disbursing US$111.6 million (S$144.2 million) to Hin Leong based on two fabricated oil sale contracts. He also instructed a former employee to forge documents for one of the bogus contracts.

The 82-year-old has appealed against his conviction and sentence.

On Oct 6, in opening his case against Lim Huey Ching, Deputy Public Prosecutor Christopher Ong said the prosecution will rely on testimony from then Hin Leong employees and representatives of PwC, as well as the deletion logs, to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt.

Lim Huey Ching is accused of instructing Hin Leong’s assistant IT manager Lim Chin, who is not related to the family, to ensure that deleted items on the firm’s servers must not be recoverable and that previous backups of information on the servers must be disposed of permanently.

She is represented by Mr Christopher Anand Daniel.

DPP Ong said: “The accused gave these instructions intending to obstruct the course of justice – in particular, to ensure that the deleted data would be unrecoverable by PwC and the police in the course of their investigations into (Hin Leong).”

The senior counsel said the prosecution will show that Lim Huey Ching was “fully aware” at the time Hin Leong was facing probable civil proceedings or criminal investigations.

He told the court that on April 10, 2020, the oil company’s then in-house counsel Nathaneal Lim discovered that the firm’s stock levels appeared significantly lower than the inventory, which had been financed by various banks, and that it also appeared that the firm had obtained multiple financing over the same cargo.

Mr Nathaneal Lim then gave certain advice to the members of the management.

On April 12, 2020, O.K. Lim’s two children told PwC that there were serious irregularities in Hin Leong’s audited financial statements, with losses of around US$800 million, which were not recorded in the books.

The two siblings later approved a request by PwC to “image” Hin Leong’s servers as there was a possibility of the servers being seized by the police.

DPP Ong said the day before PwC was to image the servers, Lim Huey Ching told Mr Lim Chin to perform the deletions.

Mr Lim Chin then instructed the firm’s system engineer, Mr Danson Siow, to delete retention policies from the servers.

This resulted in e-mails deleted from the “deleted items” folder of a user’s Outlook e-mail client, or hard deleted from that user’s Outlook e-mail client, making them permanently unrecoverable.

The prosecutor said Mr Lim Chin initiated a backup of all Hin Leong’s servers, which effectively overwrote previous backups and ensured any recently deleted items would not show up in the newly created backup.

Mr Lim Chin also deleted mail journals, which effectively removed copies of e-mails that were configured to be placed in a user mailbox.

PwC began imaging Hin Leong’s servers on Aug 14, 2020, said DPP Ong.

While conducting digital forensic examination of the images obtained, PwC discovered that there were deletions of retention policies on Hin Leong’s servers, he said.

The first witness for the prosecution was Mr Lie Kok Keong, a partner at PwC who first met the Lim family at Hin Leong’s office on April 9, 2020.

That meeting, which was also attended by senior lawyers from Rajah & Tann, was held to discuss the appointment of PwC as financial adviser and discuss potential options for the restructuring of Hin Leong’s business.

Mr Lie said that following disclosures made at the April 12 meeting, PwC was concerned that irregularities might lead to the authorities coming in to seize records, leaving the financial advisers with no information to work with.

He contacted Mr Nathaneal Lim for permission to image the company records, though the actual process was handled by another team.

The trial continues on Oct 7.

A person found guilty of intending to obstruct the course of justice faces a jail term of up to seven years or a fine, or both.

O.K. Lim and his two children have also been declared bankrupt.

The bankruptcy stems from the family’s agreement in September 2024 to pay US$3.5 billion to the court-appointed liquidators of the company and top creditor HSBC after a 50-day civil trial.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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