Apex Court dismisses appeals against conviction by duo in S$8 billion penny stock crash case

Quah attended the hearing in person while out on bail of S$4 million.

The scheme unravelled on Oct 4, 2013 when the share prices of the three companies crashed, erasing S$8 billion in market capitalisation from SGX.

Soh was given 36 years’ jail and Quah, 20, but the pair are also appealing against their sentences at a later date.

On Friday, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said on behalf of the court that the appellants had failed to demonstrate any error in the trial judge’s findings of fact.

He said a high threshold must be met before findings of fact will be overturned on appeal.

He said it was “wholly improper” for the counsel for Quah, Mr Sivanathan Nithyanantham, to raise baseless allegations of bias against the trial judge.

The lawyer later withdrew the allegations but again repeated them. The Chief Justice said the court must assume that he had done this on his client’s instructions.

The Court of Appeal later declined to extend bail for Quah, saying it saw no basis at all for this.

While the sentence on appeal is yet to be determined, Quah is subject to the existing sentence of 20 years, said the court.

However, the court was prepared to defer Quah’s commencement of sentence by one week, on the condition that her bail amount was increased to S$6 million as she was an enhanced flight risk.