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High Court judge Hoo Sheau Peng on Monday rejected Huey Ching’s application challenging the admission of legal advice given by the firm’s in-house counsel in 2020 as evidence, The Straits Times reported.

The counsel had flagged irregularities in the company’s financials and urged the Lim family, who owned the business, to “come clean” and “seek the bank’s forgiveness.”

Prosecutors earlier claimed the advice is relevant to show that Huey Ching was aware that Hin Leong was facing probable civil proceedings or criminal investigations when she instructed IT staff in April 2020 to delete data from its computer servers, for which she is being accused of obstructing the course of justice.

Huey Ching argued that the advice was covered by legal privilege, which protects private communications between lawyers and their clients from being forcibly disclosed in court.

Hoo, however, found the advice admissible as it was given to Huey Ching in her capacity as a Hin Leong director.

The right to claim or waive privilege also rested solely with Hin Leong’s liquidators, who had fully waived privilege over it for use in the trial, the judge found.

Hoo further said any error in the district judge’s decision to admit the evidence should be addressed through an appeal if Huey Ching is convicted at the end of the trial.

Founded in 1973, Hin Leong was one of Asia’s largest oil trading companies before it suddenly collapsed in April 2020. The company was owned by O.K. Lim and his children, Huey Ching and Evan Lim, all of whom served as directors.

O.K. Lim, whose full name is Lim Oon Kuin, is serving a 13.5-year prison sentence for two counts of cheating and one count of abetting forgery. He was found to have deceived HSBC into disbursing US$111.6 million (S$144.2 million) to Hin Leong in March 2020 using two fabricated oil sale contracts, and instructed a former employee to forge documents for one of them, per Channel News Asia.

On April 13, 2020, Huey Ching allegedly instructed Hin Leong’s then-IT manager to make sure that deleted data on the company’s servers were unrecoverable and that previous back-ups were permanently deleted. Hin Leong filed for insolvency protection four days later, according to The Business Times.

Huey Ching’s trial began in October 2025 and was later paused while her application was being resolved. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for Sept. 28.