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Stockbroking firm AmFraser Securities has won its court fight to recover $1.9 million from a former customer who racked up trading losses in the October 2013 penny stock crash.

Platinum Partners, the New York hedge fund manager whose top men were arrested for alleged fraud on Monday, was at one point seen as a close ally to the three companies at the heart of the 2013 penny stock crash in Singapore.

A district judge found a project manager and his former wife liable for unauthorised share trading in a rare suit brought by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Information gathered during an investigation into ISR Capital's recent stock crash led prosecutors of John Soh Chee Wen to add allegations of witness tampering, Deputy Public Prosecutor Teo Guan Siew told the court on Tuesday during Soh's bail hearing.

A district judge adjourned the case of John Soh Chee Wen, the alleged mastermind of the penny stock crash, to next Thursday (Dec 30).

It almost never ends well when the Singapore Exchange cuts to the chase after pounding firms on its cross hair with a litany of questions on the trading of their shares and corporate transactions.

The new executive chairman of a firm that been queried several times by the Singapore Exchange (SGX) over a proposed mining deal said that the company "practises the highest levels of corporate governance and ethics".

The nagging problem with ISR Capital's proposed acquisition of a rare-earth mining asset is that the company's answers to numerous queries just keep raising even more questions.

ISR Capital, which has had its shares suspended by the regulator, said on Wednesday it will commission a third independent report to value a proposed purchase in Madagascar that would allow the firm to mine for rare earth oxides.

Several current and former directors of Swiber Holdings have been hauled up for questioning by the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) and released on bail.