Paragraph 1: A Legacy in the Dock
On a Tuesday morning in a Singapore courtroom, Dr Goh Jin Hian took the stand for the second day of his trial, carrying a weight that went beyond the legal charges before him. At 57, he is not just any former chief executive officer of a publicly traded company; he is the son of former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, and he is acutely aware that every word he speaks is being weighed in the context of his family’s public legacy. In the hushed, procedural atmosphere of the court, Dr Goh described his state of mind in 2018, when New Silkroutes Group (NSG), the investment holding company he led, engaged a designated market maker named GTC Group. With a tone that seemed to blend defensiveness with candor, he admitted that he was unfamiliar with the market-making industry at the time. He had never navigated this corner of the financial world, yet he believed, deeply and sincerely, that the services GTC offered were “completely legal.” His testimony painted a portrait of a leader who trusted the experts around him, who was navigating unfamiliar waters during a pressurized period for the company, and who was perhaps too dependent on the assurances of those he believed were acting in the company’s best interests. The phrases he used echoed a man trying to reconcile his own sense of propriety with the dark suspicions now cast upon his actions. Most strikingly, he told the court that he was “very sensitive to any wrong being done” because of the reputations at stake, including his own—a statement that cut to the heart of a trial where the prosecution alleges he conspired to create a misleading appearance of NSG’s share price, and where his defense is that he was unwitting, out of his depth, and guided by a belief that everything being done was above board.
Paragraph 2: The Pressure to Resume Trading and the Search for a Market Maker
The story Dr Goh told the court was rooted in a specific moment of vulnerability for NSG. In November 2017, the company requested a trading halt, and by December it had entered a voluntary suspension of its shares while it negotiated acquisitions. The suspension stretched on for nearly three months, a long and anxious period for any listed company. When NSG finally announced three major deals in February 2018, there was considerable internal and external pressure to lift the suspension and resume trading as soon as possible. But Dr Goh testified that NSG’s shares were already thinly traded, meaning they were difficult to buy or sell without significantly moving their market price. This was not merely a liquidity concern; it was a strategic vulnerability. Dr Goh believed that a former director and substantial shareholder, Lee Soek Shen, was selling large volumes of his shares, which would exert downward pressure on the stock price when trading resumed. He was worried that Lee’s selling activity could send NSG’s share price spiraling downward, and that this would harm the company’s standing and its business strategy, which he said was premised on a high share price. It was in this context that he asked a trusted colleague, then finance director William Teo Thiam Chuan, whether he knew any market makers who could “support shares and prevent Shen killing the price.” Teo introduced Huang Yiwen, the sole shareholder and director of GTC Group. Dr Goh met Huang only once, in February 2018. During that meeting, Huang explained the concept of market making—how his firm, as a designated market maker on the Singapore Exchange, could provide competitive bid and offer quotations to keep the market liquid and mitigate short-term volatility caused by Lee’s selling. Dr Goh, trusting the explanation, believed that over time this would allow NSG’s shares to trade toward what he considered their fair value. He had no prior relationship with Huang, no industry expertise to question him, and, as he admitted, he did not even know where to look for other market makers. With the suspension already drawing criticism and the company eager to move forward, there was “very little time” to conduct a broader search. In his mind, GTC Group arrived as a solution, a professional firm that could solve a problem he did not fully understand.
Paragraph 3: The S$60,000 Fee and the “Whiter Than White” Standard
One of the more human moments in Dr Goh’s testimony came when he discussed the money involved. GTC Group charged NSG S$60,000 per month, roughly US$46,900. When he first saw that amount in the terms of agreement, Dr Goh admitted, his immediate reaction was that it was three times his own salary. This detail seemed to hang in the air—a stark reminder that the sums swirling around corporate boardrooms and market manipulation trials are often far removed from the ordinary financial experiences of most people, even by the standards of a company CEO. “I thought it was high in that regard,” he said. “I didn’t know the market rate, I didn’t know the industry at all.” This admission cut to the core of his defense: he was not a seasoned financial engineer, but a doctor by training and a corporate leader who relied on others to know the technical details. He did not simply accept the fee blindly, however; he consulted his team, including Teo, asking whether NSG could afford it. He was assured that it could. Yet the question of why a market maker would charge such a sum, and what exactly would be done in exchange for it, became central to the prosecution’s case. For Dr Goh, the engagement was framed in his mind as a legitimate service, and he emphasized that the phrase “whiter than white” was used during the meeting with Huang. His co-accused, former chief corporate officer Kelvyn Oo Cheong Kwan, had reportedly uttered this phrase to Huang, making clear that any market-making activities for NSG had to be completely legal and comply with the rules of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and SGX. Dr Goh agreed with that sentiment wholeheartedly. He testified that he was very sensitive to potential wrongdoing because of the reputations of everyone on the board, let alone his own name. He described the board members as people of good repute, and Oo in particular, who was a lawyer by training, as someone who was “not going to do anything illegal.” In his telling, these were honorable men, mindful of their status and responsibilities, who would never knowingly engage in a scheme to deceive the market.
Paragraph 4: The Prosecution’s Theory and the Defense’s Opening Salvo
But the prosecution has laid out a very different story. Dr Goh and the other executives are accused of using GTC Group not simply to provide liquidity, but to artificially prop up NSG’s share price as part of a broader business strategy premised on maintaining a high stock price. The charge is one of conspiracy to create a misleading appearance of trading activity, and Dr Goh faces two charges: conspiring to create a misleading appearance of the company’s share price, and “doing things with the purpose of creating a misleading appearance.” His co-accused, Oo, faces the same allegations. The two men chose to contest the charges and stand trial, unlike the other two alleged co-conspirators. Huang, the market maker, was convicted for his role in conspiracies to rig the market or price for share counters and was sentenced to over two years in jail in August last year. Teo, the former finance director, was convicted and given 12 weeks’ jail in September 2024. The fact that the two men who admitted to participating in the scheme were already sentenced casts a long shadow over Dr Goh’s trial. In their opening statement on Monday, Dr Goh’s defense team—comprising Senior Counsel Tan Chee Meng, Mr Paul Loy, Mr Samuel Navindran and Ms Lee Jiayi from WongPartnership—argued forcefully that he did not know many of the key details of what Teo arranged or agreed with Huang. They even suggested that Teo himself appeared not to fully understand what Huang and GTC Group were actually doing. This framing is essential to the defense: if even the finance director, the man who introduced Huang, was out of the loop, how could Dr Goh, a CEO who barely knew the market-making industry, possibly have been part of a deliberate conspiracy? The defense is constructing a narrative of good-faith reliance, operational confusion, and but-for-their-betters ignorance. They are asking the court to see Dr Goh not as a mastermind manipulating the market, but as a busy executive who trusted his internal advisors and external specialists to handle the complicated mechanics of share trading.
Paragraph 5: Banter, Emojis, and the Ambiguity of Casual Language
As with many financial crime trials, some of the most incriminating evidence lies in messages that were never meant to be public. The prosecution has pointed to a series of WhatsApp messages that Dr Goh sent to his management team, which they argue reveal an improper intent. In one message, he wrote, “looks like we can decide how much to price our shares today” and “maybe open at S$0.30?”, punctuated with a smiling face wearing sunglasses. On its face, this message sounds like a CEO discussing how to deliberately set a share price—exactly the kind of behavior that creates a false market appearance. But the defense countered that famous remedy in many corporate cases: context. They argue that Dr Goh was being “somewhat facetious,” engaging in loose and casual banter with his team, akin to joking among colleagues. They noted that SGX rules would have made it impossible for him to actually move the share price in the manner his messages appeared to suggest. In other words, the message was not a reflection of a criminal plan, but a conversational quip, a moment of dark humor in a stressful period. The defense conceded that, even taking the worst possible interpretation of Dr Goh’s conduct, he might at most have been reckless as to whether his actions could create a false appearance. But they insisted, with emphasis, that it was never his intention or purpose to do so. For Dr Goh, these messages are presumably embarrassing artifacts, pulled from the private flow of daily work and laid bare for a courtroom to scrutinize. Anyone who has ever typed an exaggerated statement in a stressful work chat, only to have it read back in a vastly different context, could understand the risk of such evidence. Yet the stakes here are not a reprimand from a manager; they are up to seven years in prison and fines of up to S$250,000.
Paragraph 6: A Trial That Hangs Between Reputation and Legal Reality
As the trial continues, Dr Goh’s fate remains uncertain, and his testimony on Tuesday revealed a man straining to defend both his actions and his legacy. He acknowledged the immense reputational weight he carries, not only as a former CEO but as the son of a revered national figure. He spoke about the members of the NSG board as people of good repute and about his own sensitivity to wrongdoing. Yet the charges against him persist, driven by the court’s examination of what was really being said and done in those early months of 2018. The trial is not merely a legal proceeding about share prices and market-making obligations; it is a human drama about trust, ignorance, and accountability. Dr Goh’s defense paints him as an outsider to the financial industry, a leader who looked to lawyers, finance directors, and licensed market makers to tell him what was legal, and who believed them when they said everything was fine. His question—why would he engage a market maker to do something illegal, when he could have simply let the stock fall—seems to hang over the courtroom. But the law does not always require a mastermind’s intent to find a person complicit, and the trial will ultimately hinge on whether the court accepts his narrative of passive reliance or finds that he knew more than he let on. Outside the courtroom, the public watches the proceedings with a combination of curiosity and solemnity, aware that a family name can be both a shield and a burden. For Dr Goh, the trial is more than a fight for legal exoneration; it is a fight for the consistent story of who he is, what he believed, and how he intended to act. As the proceedings unfold, the court will weigh the banter of WhatsApp messages, the reassuring promises of a market maker, and the panicked pressure of resuming trading after a long suspension, and decide whether the man who took the stand was a victim of his own ignorance or a participant in a scheme to deceive the market. Until then, the trial remains an unresolved and deeply human story, with a former CEO hoping that the truth, as he sees it, will be enough to clear his name.