The founder of collapsed Singaporean oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd was sentenced to 17-1/2 years in prison on Monday for cheating global bank HSBC and abetting forgery, local media reported.

Photo by Reuters His firm, Hin Leong Trading, was among Asia's biggest oil trading companies before its sudden and dramatic collapse in 2020.Sentencing him to 17 and a half years in jail, State Courts judge Toh Han Li said he agreed with the prosecution that the offenses had the potential to undermine confidence in Singapore's oil trading industry.

The founder of a failed Singapore oil trading company was sentenced Monday to nearly 18 years in jail for cheating banking giant HSBC out of millions of dollars in one of the country's most serious cases of fraud.

The Hing Leong founder, real name Lim Oon Kuin, was earlier convicted of two charges of cheating HSBC and one count of abetting forgery.

The 82-year-old founder of Hin Leong Trading Pte., who has appeared for court hearings in a wheelchair, faced three out of more than 100 charges initially presented.

SINGAPORE: Lim Oon Kuin, the elderly founder of collapsed oil trading firm Hin Leong Trading, was on Monday (Nov 18) sentenced to 17-and-a-half years in jail in a cheating case involving at least US$111.

It was “one of the most serious cases of trade financing fraud that have ever been prosecuted in Singapore”. Read more at straitstimes.com.