askST: What next for lawyer Lim Tean after his deportation from Johor Bahru to Singapore?

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SINGAPORE – Lawyer and opposition politician Lim Tean, 61, was arrested by Singapore police on Aug 11 after being handed over by Malaysian authorities.

He was detained in Johor Bahru on Aug 6 by the Royal Malaysia Police after a warrant of arrest was issued against him in Singapore.

The warrant was over his failure to surrender to the State Courts on Aug 3 to begin serving a jail term of three months and a week for practising law without a valid certificate.

Lim was convicted of three charges under the Legal Profession Act in July 2024, and initially sentenced to six weeks’ jail and a fine of $1,000 by a district judge in February 2025.

Lim and the prosecution subsequently filed appeals, and in February 2026, the High Court judge allowed the prosecution’s appeal and enhanced Lim’s sentence to imprisonment of three months and a week.

Lim was back in court in April 2026, where he was fined $30,000 in a disciplinary case over his handling of a $30,000 cheque that was meant for his client.

What are the penalties for jumping bail?

Ng Kai Ling, associate director at LIMN Law Corporation, said that a failure to surrender to custody to serve a sentence could constitute a criminal offence, if done knowingly and without reasonable excuse.

The penalty is a fine or jail term of up to 3 years, or both.

The abscondee leaving Singapore does not mean he will receive additional charges, but it could create a legal presumption that he had no reasonable excuse for failing to surrender to custody, she added.

If he does not have a reasonable excuse, using resources that had to be mobilised to bring him back to Singapore may be an aggravating factor when the Court determines the appropriate sentence.

Ng said this may mean an additional fine or jail term of up to three years, or both - on top of the current sentence.

Who is Lim Tean?

Lim is the founder and secretary-general of Peoples Voice. He has been an opposition figure and lawyer in Singapore for more than three decades - first being admitted as an advocate and solicitor in 1991.

In 1998, Lim joined a major local law firm and worked there till 2007, leaving as an equity partner.

He later took an extended sabbatical from practice between 2007 and 2017 to develop an Indonesian mining company.

He returned to practice in 2017, setting up his own law firm - Carson Law Chambers.

Lim is the son of a former diplomat and senior civil servant. The older Lim, who was based in Moscow for a period of time, was in the public service for 20 years, including at the People’s Association and Ministry of Culture.

His mother was a Chinese teacher for over 40 years, Lim shared in a Facebook video.

What past cases did he work on?

Lim represented then-blogger Leong Sze Hian in a 2018 defamation case. Then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had sued Leong over a Facebook post that he shared on November 2018.

It was linked to an article falsely linking PM Lee to the 1MDB corruption scandal in Malaysia.

Leong lost the case, and was ordered to pay Lee a sum of over $262,000 for defamation.

In April 2021, Lim attended a court hearing as the legal representative for The Online Citizen (TOC) editor Xu Yuanchen, better known as Terry Xu, in a case involving Lee again.

Lee had filed two defamation suits over an article published on the TOC website and separately sued Xu and Rubaashini Shunmuganathan, the Malaysian author of the article.

The High Court awarded Lee a total of $210,000 in damages in September 2021.

What legal troubles did Lim face previously?

Lim faced a slew of charges in 2023 - from criminal breach of trust to unlawful stalking and acting as an advocate or solicitor without a valid practising certificate.

He had allegedly committed criminal breach of trust as a solicitor of the law firm between Nov 14 and Dec 4, 2019.

The police said Lim was entrusted with $30,000, which had been awarded to a former client as settlement in a motor injury civil suit.

He is said to have misappropriated the monies.

In another unrelated case, he allegedly stalked a former employee between April and May 2020 by repeatedly sending her flirtatious text messages, causing her distress.

Lim had also acted as an advocate or solicitor without a valid practising certificate on 66 separate occasions between April 1 and June 9 in 2025.