BUSINESSMAN John Soh Chee Wen will appear before the Singapore High Court for a three-day committal hearing starting tomorrow.

The former MCA politician was slapped with 189 charges and is accused of masterminding the 2013 penny stock crash, news site Twentytwo 13 reports in a tweet today.

The controversial businessman was arrested on November 24, 2016 and has been held in remand in the island republic since then.

On February 28, Soh failed in his second bid for bail after a High Court judge ruled that he remained a “flight risk” even if subject to tough bail conditions.

The Singapore Straits Time reported Justice Hoo Sheau Peng as having said in her ruling that Soh has “his ways and means to leave Singapore undetected”.

Senior counsel N. Sreenivasan, along with S. Balamurugan and Jason Lim of Straits Law Practice, were appointed as Soh’s lawyers in November last year after senior counsel Tan Chee Meng discharged himself.

Soh, who had looked emaciated but calm as the ruling was delivered, had failed in an earlier application for bail in a lower court in February last year. He has been in remand since November 26, 2016.

Former Ipco International chief executive Quah Su-Ling and former Ipco interim chief executive Goh Hin Calm have also been charged but they have been allowed out bail.

Soh was charged on November 25, 2016, with 181 counts under the Securities and Futures Act, the Penal Code and the Companies Act. Seven charges of witness tampering were also brought against him in February last year.

The charges are elated to the events of October 2013 when the share prices of Asiasons Capital, Blumont Group and LionGold crashed, triggering massive sell-offs in some penny stocks. – May 29, 2018.