OK Lim grandson loses Tanglin condo trust bid

As Sir Walter Scott put it in his poem Marmion, “what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive”, the judge wrote.

This is the second reported failed attempt by the Lim family to claim that assets are held on trust to try to shield them from creditors.

In 2025, OK Lim’s granddaughter Michelle Lim failed to shield three AIA Singapore insurance policies worth over half a million dollars from being part of the bankruptcy estate of her father, former Hin Leong Trading director Lim Chee Meng, who is the brother of Huey Ching and Huey Yih.

High Court Judicial Commissioner Mohamed Faizal found a lack of evidence of an intention on Chee Meng’s part, prior to his bankruptcy, to create a trust over the three policies for the sole benefit of his daughter.

He found that the documentary evidence relied on by Michelle comprised “either self-interested representations” or “mere assertions”.

In Pak’s case, the High Court found that the evidence from OK Lim and Huey Ching on the alleged agreement that Huey Yih would take the beneficial ownership of the property “consisted of bare and unverifiable assertions that were unsupported by any contemporaneous records”.

“Neither was able to produce any incidental documentation or other evidence in writing, such as a WhatsApp message or e-mail, that recorded the alleged agreement for Huey Ching to hold the property on trust for (Huey Yih),” the judge said.

Instead, the available documentary evidence “overwhelmingly” suggests that Huey Ching held both the legal and beneficial interest in the property.

The judge found that Huey Ching “was the one who signed the sale and purchase agreement, the property was registered in her name, the mortgage was taken out solely in her name”, and the mortgage payments were made from a bank account of which she was a joint account-holder.

Huey Ching also continued to arrange for payment of the property’s MCST (management corporation strata title) fees and property tax at least until 2024, the judge noted.

In addition, the judge found that Huey Yih did not repay OK Lim for the property with dividends she allegedly received as a shareholder of two ship-owning companies owned by the Lim family in 2015 – 18 years after its purchase.

“Even after accounting for property taxes and MCST charges, the numbers still do not tally as the sum of the dividends is $120,356 in excess of all the expenses flowing from the purchase of the property,” the judge noted.

The judge pointed to another inconsistency in Huey Ching’s evidence. After Huey Yih’s death, the schedule of assets filed in 2018 by her estate’s administrators, Huey Ching and their mother, Tan Sook Eng, did not include the property even though the Lim family claimed it was beneficially owned by Huey Yih since 2000.

But in 2021, after the judicial managers-turned-liquidators of Hin Leong succeeded in obtaining a Mareva injunction to freeze the Lim family’s assets worldwide up to a value of US$3.5 billion, Huey Ching listed the property as being “held solely by her with no indication of any trust” in court documents.

Then in 2024, shortly before she filed for bankruptcy, Huey Ching “did a volte-face and formally disclaimed beneficial ownership of the property”.

She claimed she had “inadvertently” included the property in court documents in 2021 and was now changing her position as she had since been “reminded” by Pak that Huey Yih was the beneficial owner of the property.

The judge agreed with the private trustees in bankruptcy, who were represented by TSMP Law and Rev Law, that Huey Ching’s explanations for her change in position in 2024 were “self-serving and internally inconsistent”.

“Ms Lim had a tendency to fall back on purported legal advice to explain her previous inconsistent positions. Yet conspicuously, no evidence of any such legal advice was ever produced, nor were the lawyers she named ever approached or called as witnesses to corroborate her claims,” the judge added.