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A FORMER fund manager and director at the now-defunct One Asia Investment Partners (OAIP) was on Tuesday (Jul 2) handed a six-month jail term for engaging in acts likely to defraud investors.
This was the first conviction under the Securities and Futures Act (SFA)for fraudulent and deceptive conduct related to over-the-counter bond trading, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement.
The individual, Sun Weiyeh, was charged on Oct 22, 2020, for two counts under the SFA.
He had sold two over-the-counter bonds from an OAIP fund – referred to as Fund A in court – at lower prices to another OAIP fund, Fund B, of which he was the majority investor. This was despite his being aware that there were earlier bids at higher prices. The two bonds were subsequently sold to the market at a profit.
Sun first solicited bids from various market participants through the Bloomberg chat messaging system. He then used the lower bid prices as reference prices to sell the two bonds from Funds A to B via pass-through trades through an intermediary, rather than sell the bonds to market participants who had offered higher prices, or using those higher prices as the reference prices instead.
What he did caused investors in Fund A to lose US$342,500 (S$465,286).
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A district court convicted him on both charges following a 26-day trial. The case was jointly investigated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Commercial Affairs Department of the Singapore Police Force.
Loo Siew Yee, MAS’ assistant managing director of policy, payments and financial crime, said: “As a director and portfolio manager of the fund management company, Mr Sun owed a duty to its investors to act in their interest at all times.
“MAS will take to task persons who abuse their position in the financial sector for personal gain, to the detriment of investors.”
The Business Times previously reported that the two funds that were involved lost their capital markets services licences in April 2017, having been ordered by the court to be wound up.
Sun applied to wind up the company in his capacity as creditor of OAIP in February 2017, a month after he left it.
The company’s website listed him as having been responsible for investments; he also had oversight of the funds and portfolios.
Before OAIP, he was with Greylock Capital Management, a global credit hedge fund in New York. He led Greylock’s expansion into Asia in 2009, when its Asian office was set up in Singapore. He was CEO of the Singapore office, OAIP said in its website.
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