SINGAPORE \u2013 The nephew of Lim Huey Ching, who is the daughter of former oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin, has failed in a bid to keep a freehold condominium in Tanglin worth over $4.5 million from being part of his aunt\u2019s bankruptcy estate.<\/p>\n
The property is located in Chelsea Gardens in Walshe Road, known for its Victorian-inspired architecture and spacious unit layouts.<\/p>\n
Denzel Pak Juin Tern, grandson of OK Lim, sued the private trustees of Huey Ching\u2019s bankruptcy estate, alleging that the property should be ring-fenced from creditors\u2019 reach because it was held on trust for his late mother, Lim Huey Yih, sister of Huey Ching.<\/p>\n
Pak therefore claimed that the property should be administered under his late mother\u2019s estate instead of Huey Ching\u2019s bankruptcy estate.<\/p>\n
Private trustees in bankruptcy are licensed insolvency practitioners appointed by the court to administer a bankrupt\u2019s estate. They take control of the bankrupt\u2019s assets, oversee repayments to creditors and supervise the bankrupt\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n
Although Huey Ching is the condo\u2019s sole registered owner and OK Lim had financed the acquisition, Pak claimed that his mother, who died in June 2017, was the sole beneficial owner of the property.<\/p>\n
Pak claimed there was an oral agreement between the two sisters and OK Lim in 2000 for Huey Ching to hold the property on trust for Huey Yih, with their father first paying for it and Huey Yih repaying him later.<\/p>\n
But Judicial Commissioner Low Siew Ling found that the case was \u201cfraught with inconsistencies from the outset\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Lims\u2019 (in particular, Huey Ching\u2019s, and OK Lim\u2019s) attempts to explain them away only multiplied them \u2013 their answers contradicted themselves or each other, were belied by objective documentary evidence and, when the documents ran out, retreated into evasion and implausible excuses,\u201d according to the Nov 5 judgment.<\/p>\n
The High Court found that ultimately, the lawsuit was brought \u201cnot to vindicate any proprietary right of the late Huey Yih or Pak in the property, but (as) a last\u2011ditch attempt to place the property beyond the reach of Huey Ching\u2019s creditors\u201d.<\/p>\n
As Sir Walter Scott put it in his poem Marmion, \u201cwhat a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive\u201d, the judge wrote.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In 2025, OK Lim\u2019s granddaughter Michelle Lim failed to shield three AIA Singapore insurance policies<\/span><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n High Court Judicial Commissioner Mohamed Faizal found a lack of evidence of an intention on Chee Meng\u2019s part, prior to his bankruptcy, to create a trust over the three policies for the sole benefit of his daughter.<\/p>\n He found that the documentary evidence relied on by Michelle comprised \u201ceither self-interested representations\u201d or \u201cmere assertions\u201d.<\/p>\n In Pak\u2019s case, the High Court found\u00a0that the evidence from OK Lim and Huey Ching on the alleged agreement that Huey Yih would take the beneficial ownership of the property \u201cconsisted of bare and unverifiable assertions that were unsupported by any contemporaneous records\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cNeither 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),\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n Instead, the available documentary evidence \u201coverwhelmingly\u201d suggests that Huey Ching held both the legal and beneficial interest in the property.<\/p>\n The judge found that Huey Ching \u201cwas 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\u201d, and the mortgage payments were made from a bank account of which she was a joint account-holder.<\/p>\n Huey Ching also continued to arrange for payment of the property\u2019s MCST (management corporation strata title) fees and property tax at least until 2024, the judge noted.<\/p>\n Lim Huey Ching, daughter of former oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin, is seen here on Oct 6, 2025. Her nephew failed in a bid to keep a condominium in Tanglin worth over $4.5 million from being part of her bankruptcy estate.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n 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 \u2013 18 years after its purchase.<\/p>\n \u201cEven 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,\u201d the judge noted.<\/p>\n The judge pointed to another inconsistency in Huey Ching\u2019s evidence. After Huey Yih\u2019s death, the schedule of assets filed in 2018 by her estate\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n But in 2021, after\u00a0the judicial managers-turned-liquidators of Hin Leong succeeded in obtaining a Mareva injunction to freeze the Lim family\u2019s assets worldwide<\/span><\/a> up to a value of US$3.5 billion, Huey Ching listed the property as being \u201cheld solely by her with no indication of any trust\u201d in court documents.<\/p>\n Then in 2024, shortly before she filed for bankruptcy, Huey Ching \u201cdid a volte-face and formally disclaimed beneficial ownership of the property\u201d.<\/p>\n She claimed she had \u201cinadvertently\u201d included the property in court documents in 2021 and was now changing her position as she had since been \u201creminded\u201d by Pak that Huey Yih was the beneficial owner of the property.<\/p>\n The judge agreed with the private trustees in bankruptcy, who were represented by TSMP Law and Rev Law, that Huey Ching\u2019s explanations for her change in position in 2024 were \u201cself-serving and internally inconsistent\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMs 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,\u201d the judge added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 The nephew of Lim Huey Ching, who is the daughter of former oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin, has failed in a bid to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/98030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/picture><\/div>
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