Santoso Winoto v Suseno Winoto and another

[5] At the time of hearing of further arguments, ie, 24 April 2023, the Property was the only property sold, out of the three properties which were the subject of the proceedings in OS 102.

[6] The plaintiff argued that the money used for first defendant’s expenses in relation to the Property came from their late father’s estate and, unless the first defendant could prove that he was the administrator of their late father’s estate, it was not “legitimate money” that could be reimbursed. The plaintiff also alleged that the money for such expenses came from a bank account in the joint names of the plaintiff and the first defendant (the “Joint Account”), which contained moneys that came from the sale of another property located at 2 Martin Place, which was registered in the plaintiff’s sole name and which did not form the subject of the proceedings in OS 102 (the “Non-related Property”). To support his allegations, the plaintiff relied on: (a) the copies of the completion account for the sale of Non-related Property; (b) the bank statements of the Joint Account for the months of December 2013 and January 2014; as well as (c) a statement of a bank account jointly owned by the first and second defendants dated January 2018 which showed a balance of $3,411,307.45. Thus, the plaintiff argued that the first defendant should explain the source of funds used to pay the loan repayments, tax, and MCST payments that he claimed to have incurred in relation to the sale of the Property.

[7] Against the plaintiff’s arguments, the first defendant’s overarching case was that the plaintiff had the ulterior motive of discovering the source of moneys of the first defendant through his oral application. Specifically, the first defendant argued that the matters raised in this oral application were wholly outside the purview of OS 102, and that the gist of the matters raised in this oral application had already been traversed in detail at a previous hearing on 1 November 2022. Next, as regards the plaintiff’s allegations above, the first respondent made three points. First, the first defendant argued the plaintiff’s allegations were baseless and made without any document or substantiation. Second, the first defendant submitted that the plaintiff had essentially cherry-picked certain documents that were previously exhibited by the first defendant to falsely allege that the reimbursement claims of the first defendant for the Property were paid for from the sale of the Non-related Property on the basis that the sale proceeds were deposited into the Joint Account. Third, the first defendant contended that just because another joint account between the first and second defendants showed a balance of $3,411,307.45 in January 2018, it did not mean that the first defendant had unlawfully taken the over their late father’s moneys or the sale proceeds of the Non-related Property that were deposited in the Joint Account.

[8] The second defendant, ie, the ex-wife of the plaintiff, aligned herself with the first defendant’s position. To this end, she submitted that the scope of further arguments should be limited to the appropriate reimbursements to be made to parties from the sale of the Property, and thus it was inappropriate for the plaintiff to raise new allegations of fact without making the appropriate application. Furthermore, the second defendant also submitted that it was inappropriate for the plaintiff to raise these allegations in further arguments, as the mechanism of further arguments was intended to account for the fact that full arguments may not have been presented to a judge in chambers due to the limited time available, but here the plaintiff was merely repeating the same arguments made in his submissions on the reimbursement claims.

[9] In my view, the parties’ submissions raised the following issues for my determination:

[11] To start with, I did not consider it appropriate to determine the plaintiff’s oral application, as the allegations which were raised by the plaintiff were not germane in OS 102. The plaintiff did not even contest the fact that the first defendant did actually expend the sums which were the subject of his reimbursement claims, and that these sums went towards the expenses of sale of the Property. What the plaintiff did take issue with in his oral application was the source of the sums spent by the first defendant, arguing that these were not “legitimate money[s]” because it had supposedly come from funds which the first defendant allegedly obtained wrongfully.

[15] As a starting point, the court has the inherent power to give consequential directions in respect of its orders and to make non-substantive amendments to its orders (see the Court of Appeal decision of Retrospect Investment (S) Pte Ltd v Lateral Solutions Pte Ltd and another [2020] 1 SLR 763 at [12]-–[15], citing the High Court decision of Godfrey Gerald QC v UBS AG and others [2004] 4 SLR(R) 411 at [18] and Goh Yihan, “The Inherent Jurisdiction and Inherent Powers of the Singapore Courts: Rethinking the Limits of their Exercise” [2011] Sing JLS 178 at 186). This statement of law is also expressed in O 92 r 5 of the Rules of Court (2014 Rev Ed) (“ROC 2014”), which applied to this present oral application made under OS 102. By way of context, O 92 r 5 provides:

[18] A number of non-exhaustive factors come readily to mind as being material:

[21] First, at the time of my decision, I regarded the plaintiff’s failure to commence separate proceedings against the first defendant as being a factor which pointed against the granting of a stay. At the time of the application before me, there was no separate proceeding instituted to deal with the question of the plaintiff’s claims in respect of the funds used to purchase the Property. There was also no evidence or even any indication from the plaintiff that he intended to commence separate proceedings against the first defendant in respect of the first defendant’s alleged wrongful use of funds. Accordingly, the consideration that the first defendant’s other means of legal recourse was not rendered nugatory was not engaged to begin with.

[22] Second, even if separate proceedings had been commenced by the plaintiff in respect of the first defendant’s alleged wrongful misappropriation of funds, it suffices to say that, based on the limited evidence before me, I was not convinced of the prospects of success that any claim by the plaintiff against the first defendant. Before me, the plaintiff only relied on three documents, which were namely: (a) the copies of the completion account for the sale of Non-related Property; (b) the bank statements of the plaintiff and first defendant’s Joint Account for the months of December 2013 and January 2014; as well as (c) a statement of a bank account jointly owned by the first and second defendants dated January 2018 which showed a balance of $3,411,307.45. These documents were a scant basis for me to halt the implementation of the sale.

[23] Third, even leaving aside the merits of any potential claim that the plaintiff might have against the first defendant, should the plaintiff eventually prevail in his claim, I did not think that there would be any real risk of any clawback action by the plaintiff being unsuccessful. The first defendant had substantial assets in Singapore – indeed, apart from the three properties which formed the subject of OS 102, the first defendant had substantial sums in his joint bank account with the second defendant from as recently as February 2021, and there was no indication that his means have changed since. I therefore found that the ease of enforcing any successful claim against the first defendant pointed against the granting of a stay.

[26] For the foregoing reasons, I was thus of the view that it was inappropriate to consider the plaintiff’s oral application, and that even if I were to do so, I would have declined to exercise my discretion to grant a stay of implementation and distribution.