SINGAPORE — The High Court on March 4 allowed an appeal by Lim Oon Kuin, the 84-year-old founder of failed oil trading company Hin Leong, and imposed a term of 13.5 years.This means a shaving of four years off his original sentence.Justice Hoo Sheau Peng said the original jail term of 17.5 years' jail was «crushing» even with the usual one-third remission.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 has ever been prosecuted in Singapore».After a lengthy district court trial, he was found to have duped HSBC into disbursing US$111.6 million (S$143 million) to Hin Leong based on two fabricated oil sale contracts.He was also found to have instructed a former employee to forge documents for one of the bogus contracts.On March 4, Justice Hoo 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 sector. Read more