Datuk Ringo Low Kim Leng

On the court record

Datuk Ringo Low Kim Leng appears in the corpus as a respondent's advocate in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), in matters drawn from banking recovery and from the illegal-moneylending line of disputes. In one appeal, appearing for the respondent, the question was one of guarantee liability following an insolvency: whether a bank could claim against guarantors for accrued interest arising after the winding-up of the borrower, in circumstances where the claim was not for the principal loan sum — because that sum had already been redeemed by the liquidator — but for post-winding-up interest. That matter turns on the reach of a guarantee once the primary debt has been discharged in the borrower's liquidation, and on how interest continues, or ceases, to accrue against sureties. In two further appeals, again appearing for the respondent, the contest was over whether transactions cast as sales and purchases of land were in truth sham transactions concealing illegal moneylending: whether the court should scrutinise the documents and the substance of the dealings once unlicensed lending is alleged, whether the maxims in pari delicto and ex turpi causa non oritur actio apply to deny relief where illegality is established, and whether the trial court had been plainly wrong. In each appeal the respondent's position was to defend a first-instance outcome against a lender or purported lender seeking to enforce its bargain, so the advocacy was directed at holding the line drawn below rather than at overturning it. Together the appearances mark a practice concentrated on the defensive, respondent side of financial and lending disputes on appeal — guarantee and post-insolvency interest on one hand, and the characterisation of disguised loans and the consequences of illegality on the other. The recurring theme is the extent to which a lender may enforce its bargain when the underlying arrangement is complicated by insolvency or by an allegation of statutory illegality, and how the courts treat parties who are themselves participants in an unlawful scheme.