Deep Dive: How CoAssets lost its investors millions of dollars

In the last weeks of 2020, hundreds of retail investors were shocked when they discovered that Singapore-based investment platform CoAssets had disposed of over US$30 million of their investments to a virtually unknown debt recovery firm.

Numerous affected parties have filed police reports against the company and its former CEO Getty Goh, but many are still asking: How did this happen?

Getty Goh, ex-CEO of CoAssets / Photo credit: Getty Goh

On this episode of Deep Dive, Tech in Asia editor-in-chief Terence Lee discusses the events that led to CoAssets’ closure and the alleged mismanagement of investors’ money at the firm.

Timecodes:

00:00 – Intro music
00:46 – Today’s topic: The millions of dollars that CoAssets lost
01:31 – Former chief operating officer Lawrence Lim’s Facebook post
03:51 – Explaining CoAssets’ backstory
04:44 – A business run by ex-military personnel
05:22 – 2017: When things started going downhill
05:58 – Lim’s objections to CoAssets’ operations
06:32 – A lot of eggs – and money – went into just one basket
07:28 – Keeping investors in the dark
08:21 – When the one basket broke, things took a turn for the worse
08:59 – The overvalued emeralds
10:38 – Enter DWG
11:18 – Asking for an extension of repayment deadlines
11:49 – Suspicious circumstances behind an agreement with DWG
12:36 – Disputes with DWG
13:10 – Shock from former CEO Getty Goh and CoAssets’ investors
14:39 – Who’s to blame?
17:05 – What can CoAssets’ investors do?
19:00 – Sneak peek at Startup Snapshot season 3

Download the full transcript here.

Featured reporter:

• Terence Lee, editor-in-chief at Tech in Asia

Essential reading:

• The rare tech startup which listed early and became profitable
• Millions lost, police reports filed: Behind the plight of CoAssets’ hapless investors

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