Nelson Loh intends to plead guilty to charges including forgery and cheating
SINGAPORE - Disgraced Singapore businessman Nelson Loh Ne-Loon, who faces 60 charges related to past businesses and has been in remand since 2022, has said he intends to plead guilty.
Loh, 44, who made headlines in 2020 with his cousin Terence Loh over their £280 million (S$475 million) takeover bid for English Premier League club Newcastle United, currently faces 60 charges of cheating, forgery and transferring the benefits of his criminal conduct.
According to court records, Nelson Loh is expected to plead guilty on July 1 before Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan.
Loh is said to have conspired with his employee, Wong Soon Yuh, 45, to cheat six banks into believing that audits were performed for the Cayman Islands-incorporated Novena Global Healthcare Group (NGHG) that he co-founded, its subsidiary Novena Global Healthcare, and wine trading and distribution company Giron, where his former wife, Ms Lee Chai Hoon, was a director and shareholder.
The banks – Maybank, Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank, DBS Bank, UOB and HSBC – were dishonestly induced to disburse loans amounting to about $69 million in all in July 2019.
Wong, also known as Michael Wong, faces 14 charges of forgery, cheating and transferring sums which he had reasonable grounds to believe were benefits from another person’s criminal conduct.
He is also set to plead guilty on July 1.
Loh and Wong have been remanded since their arrest in December 2022 after two years on the run.
The two men left Singapore in September 2020 amid business troubles. Within days of their departure, the police received a report that signatures of accounting firm Ernst & Young had been forged on some NGHG financial statements.
A warrant of arrest and an Interpol red notice were issued against them. The notice is a request to law enforcement units worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or other legal action.
The police said then that their Chinese counterparts had assisted in the two men’s return to Singapore on Dec 24, 2022. They were arrested by the Commercial Affairs Department the same day.
While they were in remand, Loh requested to be released on bail as he said he had not seen his family and children for a long time. The judge rejected his request.
Loh is represented by Mr Ng Yuan Siang and Mr Chooi Jing Yen of law firm Eugene Thuraisingam LLP, while Wong’s lawyers are Mr Nakoorsha Abdul Kadir, Ms Michelle Tang and Ms Rasveen Kaur from Nakoorsha Law Corporation.
Those convicted of committing forgery, intending for the document forged to be used for cheating, can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
The offence of cheating carries a penalty of a jail term of up to 10 years and a fine.
Those who transfer benefits from their criminal conduct, or property which they had reasonable grounds to believe is another person’s benefits from criminal conduct, can be fined up to $500,000 or jailed for up to 10 years, or both.