The Singapore Court of Appeal has dismissed the sentencing appeals of John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling, key figures in the 2013 S$8 billion penny stock crash that devastated the local stock market.
Soh will serve 36 years in prison, while Quah must serve 20 years for their roles in orchestrating a massive market manipulation scheme involving Blumont, Asiasons, and LionGold.
They were convicted on 180 and 169 charges respectively for using 189 trading accounts to artificially inflate share prices between August 2012 and October 2013.
The scheme collapsed on October 4, 2013, when the stocks crashed, wiping out S$8 billion in market value on the Singapore Exchange.
Soh was also found guilty of witness tampering. He attended the hearing via video-link.
Quah’s lawyer, Sivanathan Nithyanantham, was ordered to pay S$10,000 in personal costs after making unfounded allegations of judicial bias, which he later retracted with a formal apology.
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, who delivered the verdict alongside Justices Tay Yong Kwang and Andrew Phang, rejected arguments that the sentences were disproportionate or unjustly enhanced.