UOB’s loan fraud damages against Lippo Marina Collection quadruple to S$76.1 million
The bank was deceived into disbursing higher housing loans between 2011 and 2013
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[SINGAPORE] The Appellate Division of the High Court has more than quadrupled damages awarded to UOB in its case against developer Lippo Marina Collection to S$76.1 million from S$17.7 million.
This was after the lender partially succeeded in its appeal concerning fraudulently inflated prices of condominium units that led to it disbursing higher housing loans.
The three-judge panel on Monday (Aug 24) increased the payment awarded to UOB on the grounds of increased damages, as well as pre-judgment interest on the additional sum.
Between 2011 and 2013, UOB extended housing loans to purchasers of 38 units in a condominium development called Marina Collection.
Lippo had conspired with these 38 buyers to artificially inflate the purchase price of these units to deceive UOB into disbursing housing loans to them that were based on the sum stated in the options to purchase.
The 38 buyers were referred by two property agents to the developer, which agreed to grant “furniture rebates” to the purchasers. These rebates were to lower the units’ purchase price from the stated amount to the actual sum.
“As a result of the furniture rebate scheme, UOB disbursed higher loans than it would have had it known of the actual purchase price, and it unknowingly breached the loan-to-value limit,” said Justice Woo Bih Li, who sat on the three-judge panel.
The regulations set by the Monetary Authority of Singapore at the time allowed only an 80 per cent loan-to-value limit on banks when disbursing housing loans.
All 38 purchasers subsequently defaulted, and 37 of the 38 units were repossessed by UOB. The loan granted to one of the purchasers was later restructured, with the buyer making regular payments since.
Why did the damages increase?
The earlier High Court ruling noted that UOB had received rents and repayments; therefore, these were deducted from the damages because they reduced the bank’s overall exposure.
However, Justice Woo found that while this would have been the case if the rents and repayments had been applied to pay the actual purchase price loans first, the loans did not represent the losses suffered by UOB that were caused by Lippo.
“Lippo was only responsible for the excess loans,” the judge said.
“There was no surplus available to be used to pay the excess loans and, hence, no part of the rents and repayments received should have been deducted from UOB’s damages.”
In the initial judgment, the court deducted S$37.2 million in damages and rental income.
The Appellate Division said that the deduction should not have been made. However, the judges excluded S$1.3 million relating to the restructured loan, resulting in a S$35.9 million increase in damages.
Justice Woo noted that UOB was also entitled to interest.
In the initial ruling, statutory interest was stopped in September 2017 as UOB was expected to have started selling the units then.
The judge, in his verdict on the appeal, acknowledged that the bank had indeed “acted unreasonably in not even considering the possibility of selling the units between 2017 and 2023”.
However, he also said that UOB’s unreasonable conduct would not amount to a failure to mitigate.
“UOB could only have failed to avoid the losses caused by Lippo if the valuations of the units in September 2017 were high enough such that, by starting to sell the units in September 2017, there would have been some surplus after paying the actual purchase price loans to reduce the amount of excess loans on which statutory interest was accruing.”
The interest was subsequently set at 5.33 per cent a year, and ran on the additional damages from November 2014 to August 2026.
By the court’s calculations, the interest added about S$22.5 million to the damages to be awarded to UOB.
This amount, together with the original award of S$17.7 million and the S$35.9 million of damages restored on appeal, brings the total sum to around S$76.1 million.
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