More than 50 days of trial dates have been scheduled for the prosecution to make its case.
Ng was charged in March 2021 and has been in remand since February 2023, after he was unable to raise bail of S$6 million. Bail was later revoked.
Other men have already landed in jail for attempts to help Ng flee Singapore while he was out on bail.
On Tuesday, Ng appeared in court with a topknot and wearing prison garb.
It took about an hour for a member of the court staff to read all of Ng’s charges to him. After this, Ng confirmed with Judicial Commissioner Christopher Tan that he was claiming trial.
Ng’s lead counsel Hassan Esa Almenoar then applied for the prosecution to provide a reason for standing down the 66 charges.
If the prosecution could not give a reason, Mr Almenoar argued that it should either proceed on all the charges, or give Ng a discharge amounting to an acquittal.
When the judge asked Mr Almenoar about his basis for this application, the lawyer said he had no past cases to cite, but thought that this was the “correct approach”.
He later added that the remaining charges would “hang over the head of the accused” if they were stood down and not dealt with before the trial.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Gordon Oh argued vehemently against the application, saying that it was filed at the “eleventh hour” and “entirely a waste of time”.
He cited previous times in the proceedings when Ng’s defence raised the issue of the stood-down charges but did not go on to file an application, despite the court setting aside resources for it to be heard.
Resurrecting the issue on the first day of trial was “clearly a time-wasting exercise”, Mr Oh said.
Judicial Commissioner Tan rejected Ng’s application on the stood-down charges, noting that standing down charges has long been entrenched in Singapore’s criminal jurisprudence.
The judge cited a Court of Appeal ruling stating that an application to stand down charges is almost always uncontroversial and unlikely to prejudice an accused person.
He also said the defence had not provided a meaningful explanation of how standing down the charges would be oppressive to Ng or prejudice him.
Parties also addressed the court on 58 conditioned statements that the prosecution intends to introduce as evidence.
When Mr Almenoar said that he needed to consult Ng on whether he agreed to the statements being adduced, the judge said this should have been done earlier.
After court adjourned for an hour, Mr Almenoar informed the judge that his client objected to the admission of two conditioned statements out of four from the first four witnesses.
The lawyer asked for more time to consult his client on the remaining statements. Judicial Commissioner Tan then set a timeline for the defence to adhere to.
Later, Mr Almenoar claimed that part of the reason the defence was “in flux” was because it was not easy to meet Ng and take instructions from him, as their appointments to see him in remand were too short or would get interrupted.
In response, Mr Oh said that Ng had gone through six sets of lawyers, including his current defence team, since he was put in remand.
Mr Oh said the prosecution had facilitated every application for more time made by the defence, and was in contact with the prison service to make sure the defence could make appointments to meet Ng.
He said he could not see any difficulties in the defence’s attempts to meet Ng, as the prosecution had endeavoured to facilitate the defence’s requests.
Ng’s trial resumes on Wednesday morning with the prosecution set to give its opening address.
