JANE REBECCA ONG v Estate of LIM LIE HOA ALSO KNOWN AS LIM LE HOA ALSO KNOWN AS LILY ARIEF HUSNI, deceased

Facts

Mdm Lim Lie Hoa (also known as Lim Le Hoa and Lily Arief Husni) died on 8 August 2009, and Mr Ong Siauw Ping (OSP) became executor and trustee of her estate under her will. On the plaintiff Ms Jane Rebecca Ong's application in Bankruptcy No 2704 of 2020, the court ordered on 4 March 2021 that the estate be administered in bankruptcy, and the applicants were appointed joint and several private trustees.

The trustees' investigations focused on a property at 16 East Sussex Lane, which had devolved on OSP in 2011, was sub-divided, and was sold in two lots in 2018 for a total of $35,088,000 before fees and taxes. According to court papers from an examination of judgment debtor, OSP admitted depositing the proceeds, as sole executor, into his personal bank accounts, including accounts with Citibank Singapore Limited, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited and United Overseas Bank Limited. The will gave him the property subject to the payment of debts, expenses and duties. OSP had not supplied the complete bank statements the trustees had sought since June 2022, and the banks said they could not release them without his consent or a court order.

The trustees therefore filed three summonses (HC/SUM 4139/2022, 4144/2022 and 4145/2022) under s 335 of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (IRDA), read with s 175 of the Evidence Act and s 47 of the Banking Act, asking for liberty to inspect and copy the banks' records. Goh Yihan JC heard them.

Issues

1. Whether the principles governing inquiries into a company's dealings under s 244 of the IRDA also apply to applications under s 335
2. Whether the private trustees had standing and met the two-stage test for production of the bank statements
3. Whether disclosure by the banks fell within the bankers' books exception to banking secrecy

Holding

The court granted the three applications and made the orders sought, giving the trustees liberty to inspect and take copies of the specified bank records held by each of the three banks.

Reasoning

No local case had interpreted s 335 or its predecessor. The judge drew on English and Hong Kong decisions treating the trustee's and liquidator's investigative powers alike, and on the shared policy that both officers gather in an insolvent's assets for creditors. He therefore applied to s 335 the Court of Appeal's two-stage test for s 285 of the Companies Act from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and others v Celestial Nutrifoods Ltd (in compulsory liquidation) [2015] 3 SLR 665.

The trustees had standing because the estate's property vested in them and, under s 39 of the IRDA, references to the Official Assignee include a trustee in bankruptcy. On the first stage, the hurdle is low. The proceeds had gone into OSP's accounts rather than the estate's, the banks did not dispute that they could produce the statements, and complete, unredacted records were needed to investigate whether the estate had been properly handled.

On the second stage, most balancing factors favoured disclosure: only production, not oral examination, was sought, no wrongdoing or litigation against the banks was in view, and no undue burden was raised. The key concern was the banks' exposure under the secrecy rule in s 47 of the Banking Act. The judge held that the bank statements were bankers' books under s 170 of the Evidence Act, being permanent records of customer transactions. Applying Success Elegant Trading v La Dolce Vita Fine Dining Co Ltd and others and another appeal [2016] 4 SLR 1392, the s 335 applications were legal proceedings in which the trustees had a right to the documents independent of s 175, and an order under s 175(1) should be made. That brought the disclosure within the statutory exception.

From the judgment