Hyflux founder Olivia Lum, once celebrated as Singapore's water queen, is standing trial on charges of failing to disclose material information about the ill-fated Tuaspring water-and-power project, whose collapse wiped out S$900 million invested by 34,000 retail investors. Prosecutors closed their case in September 2026 after calling 22 witnesses.
Lum, 65, was first charged in November 2022 alongside Hyflux's former chief financial officer Cho Wee Peng and several independent directors with disclosure-related offences under the Securities and Futures Act, over the non-disclosure of information about Tuaspring in 2011. She faces six charges in total: four counts of Companies Act violations and two counts of breaching the Securities and Futures Act. In May 2023 she was hit with three additional Companies Act counts. The trial began on August 11, 2025, before District Judge Toh Han Li, and is scheduled to run into 2026.
The prosecution's case is that Lum, determined to win the Tuaspring tender in 2011, intentionally withheld material information, including the fact that the project's profitability hinged on electricity sales and its exposure to volatile wholesale power prices, for fear of deterring investors. Hyflux won the tender with the lowest bid, offering to sell desalinated water to national water agency PUB at 45 cents per cubic metre, undercutting competitors by at least 27 per cent. But PUB had committed to buying only water, not electricity, meaning the plant would operate at a loss unless power sales performed.
Bankers who testified described Tuaspring as carrying a higher risk profile than a typical integrated water and power plant. Of six banks approached in 2010 and 2011, only three ultimately offered a US$150 million loan for the desalination plant, far below the initial US$537 million proposal for the whole project.
Hyflux was placed under judicial management in November 2020 and wound up in 2021. Its collapse left about 34,000 investors in its perpetual securities and preference shares, who had sunk a combined S$900 million, with nothing. Former director Rajsekar Kuppuswami Mitta pleaded guilty and was fined S$90,000 and barred from directorships.
Prosecutors closed their case on September 29, 2026, after calling 22 witnesses including former Hyflux staff and bank representatives. The defence was to indicate on October 21 whether it would submit that there was no case to answer. Lum has denied wrongdoing.
Once lauded as a self-made entrepreneur who built Hyflux from a S$20,000 startup into a global water player, Lum's fall has become emblematic of the risks of complex project finance and the human cost of disclosure failures, fuelling calls for stronger retail investor protection in Singapore.