Soh Chee Wen v PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

Facts

Soh Chee Wen (the first appellant) and Quah Su-Ling (the second appellant) masterminded a scheme between 1 August 2012 and 3 October 2013 to inflate the market for, and the prices of, shares in Blumont, Asiasons and LionGold on the Singapore Exchange. They did so through 189 trading accounts held with 20 financial institutions in the names of 60 individuals and companies. When the inflated prices could no longer be held up, the shares crashed on 4 and 7 October 2013.

After trial in the High Court, both were convicted of conspiracies to commit false trading and price manipulation under s 197 of the Securities and Futures Act, deception under s 201(b), and cheating two financial institutions, Interactive Brokers and Goldman Sachs. Soh was also convicted of managing companies while an undischarged bankrupt and of witness tampering. The trial judge imposed aggregate terms of 36 years' imprisonment on Soh and 20 years' imprisonment on Quah. The Court of Appeal had dismissed their appeals against conviction on 10 October 2025. This judgment, in CA/CCA 40/2022 and CA/CCA 41/2022, deals with their appeals against sentence. The Prosecution sought a higher sentence for Quah and a personal costs order against her counsel, Mr Sivananthan Nithyanantham, over allegations of bias he had made against the trial judge.

Issues

1. Whether there was any basis to interfere with the sentence imposed on the first appellant
2. Whether the second appellant's sentence should be reduced, or increased because of the allegations of bias made against the trial judge
3. Whether a personal costs order should be made against counsel for the second appellant

Holding

The Court of Appeal dismissed both appeals against sentence in their entirety, leaving the aggregate terms of 36 years' and 20 years' imprisonment in place. It declined to increase the second appellant's sentence and ordered Mr Sivananthan personally to pay costs of $10,000 to the Prosecution.

Reasoning

The court rejected Soh's argument that others had caused the crash. Attributing the trading of those associates to the appellants had already been affirmed on the conviction appeal, and by inflating prices he had in any event taken on the risk of a collapse. The aggravating factors the judge relied on matched those recognised in Lau Wan Heng v Public Prosecutor and Public Prosecutor v Ng Sae Kiat. The precedents Soh cited were unreported cases without reasons, or cases such as Tan Koon Swan v Public Prosecutor decided under a far milder regime. Since then, Parliament had raised the penalties for market rigging, and none of those cases came close in scale. The court also set out the factors relevant to sentencing cheating of this kind, including the value of property involved, the harm caused, difficulty of detection, efforts to stop the victim recovering its losses, and harm to Singapore's reputation as a financial centre. Soh's witness tampering was far more serious than in the cases he relied on.

There was no double counting, because each group of charges targets a different mischief. The one transaction rule did not apply, since the offences were separate acts protecting different interests. The total of 36 years exceeded the usual sentence for the most serious single offence but was not crushing, given the scale of the scheme and its harm to the market.

Quah's reduced role had already been reflected in her sentence. She had chosen not to testify, and she had abused her position as chief executive of IPCO. Her counsel admitted that the bias allegations were made on his own initiative, so increasing her sentence would be unfair.

Applying Syed Suhail bin Syed Zin v Public Prosecutor, the court found that counsel had acted improperly by making unfounded bias allegations and by later misdescribing them, which put the Prosecution to unnecessary costs. His apology and retraction tempered, but did not excuse, that conduct.

From the judgment