An embattled oil tycoon is selling a mansion in Singapore for $32 million. It's one of the city's status-symbol houses that business leaders covet.
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- An oil tycoon convicted of cheating and instigating forgery is selling his mansion in Singapore for $32 million.
- In land-scarce Singapore, Good Class Bungalows — mansions on private land — are a trophy among the ultrawealthy.
- TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and billionaire James Dyson are among the elite who own GCBs in Singapore.
A former oil tycoon convicted of cheating and instigating forgery is selling his mansion in Singapore for $43 million Singapore dollars, or $32 million.
Lim Oon Kuin, the founder of the collapsed oil firm Hin Leong Trading, is putting his Good Class Bungalow in Tanglin Hill, one of the city's wealthy enclaves, for sale.
A home on private property is incredibly rare in the land-scarce city — which spans a mere 274 square miles. The largest and most expensive type of landed home available in Singapore is known as a Good Class Bungalow, or GCB.
There are only an estimated 2,800 GCBs in Singapore. According to the Urban Land Authority, a GCB requires a minimum plot size of 15,070 square feet and is found only in designated prime residential areas.
Knight Frank Singapore
The property is a two-story detached house with five bedrooms, a garden, and a swimming pool, per a press release from Knight Frank Singapore, which is handling the sale.
Lim, 81, was convicted last month of three criminal charges of cheating and forgery, per local paper The Straits Times. His sentencing is scheduled for October 3. Lim's lawyers did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Two charges against Lim involved cheating HSBC, while the third involved instigating one of his Hin Leong employees to forge a document, per The Business Times. The charges involved a total of $111.7 million.
Reuters
Lim faces another 127 charges, which were stood down and will be dealt with later, per The Straits Times. Prosecutors alleged that 16 banks in Singapore suffered $291.9 million in actual monetary losses out of $2.7 billion in loans that Lim duped them into extending to Hin Leong.
According to Bloomberg, Hin Leong was "one of Asia's biggest suppliers of diesel and shipping fuel" at its peak.
This is the third GCB that Lim has put on the market.
In 2021, he sold one GCB in October 2021 for SG$33.39 million, and another GCB in November 2023 for slightly under SG$26.5 million.
"There has been quite a bit of market buzz about GCBs of late, and for good reason. On top of offering substantial capital appreciation, these prized assets' prime location and access to lifestyle options reinforce their desirability," Mary Sai, Knight Frank's executive director for capital markets, said in the press release.
Some prominent business leaders who have bought GCBs in Singapore in the past include TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and billionaire James Dyson.
In April, Bloomberg reported that tech billionaire Forrest Li's wife filed an option to buy a GCB for SG$42.5 million.
According to CBRE's luxury residential report, 23 GCB transactions worth SG$777.32 million were recorded in 2023, down from 47 transactions worth SG$1.365 billion in 2022.