SINGAPORE – Hin Leong founder Lim Oon Kuin was hospitalised with breathing difficulties just three days before the 84-year-old’s 13½-year prison sentence was due to start on April 1.
His son, Mr Evan Lim Chee Meng, told The Straits Times on March 30 that Lim was hospitalised in Gleneagles Hospital on March 28 after “we found him disoriented in the study, mumbling he has difficulty breathing”.
When asked what triggered the breathing difficulties, Mr Evan Lim said: “We are still waiting for the doctor to run more tests on him, we have no answers yet.”
Lim was ordered to surrender at the State Courts on April 1 after the High Court on March 4 allowed his appeal and imposed a jail term of 13½ years, shaving off four years from his original sentence of 17½ years for cheating and abetting forgery.
When asked if Lim will report to State Courts on April 1, his son said: “We are waiting for the doctor’s report.”
On what his father’s lawyers have advised him to do, Mr Evan Lim said: “I believe it’s best to wait for the medical report from the doctor.”
ST has contacted the Singapore Prison Service for comment.
On March 4, High Court judge Hoo Sheau Peng found that the original jail term of 17½ years was “crushing”, even with the usual one-third remission.
She 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 trading sector.
Justice Hoo gave him sentencing discounts on account of substantial restitution made, as well as Lim’s old age. She noted that the loss to HSBC on one of the cheating charges was almost halved, from US$56 million (S$72 million) to US$29.7 million, after Lim made restitution.
But the judge rejected Lim’s call for the court to exercise judicial mercy by imposing a one-day jail term.
Judicial mercy is the discretionary power of Singapore’s courts to impose a more lenient sentence because of exceptional mitigating circumstances. It has so far been exercised in cases where the offender is suffering from a terminal illness, and where the offender is so ill that jail time would carry a high risk of endangering his life.
Lim’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, in an appeal hearing in November 2025, had argued that there is a heightened risk of his client suffering a fall in prison that may lead to his death.
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 have ever been prosecuted in Singapore”.
He was found guilty of cheating HSBC of US$111.6 million, through Hin Leong employees, by claiming that the oil trading firm had entered into two contracts to sell oil to China Aviation Oil (Singapore) and Unipec Singapore, and then applying for discounting of these purported transactions.
The court found that the two transactions were complete fabrications, concocted on Lim’s directions, and the discounting applications were supported by forged or fabricated documentation.