Bumi Armada loses court case

Bumi Armada (defendants) lost its court case against Tozzi Industries (plaintiff), according to this judgment:


For the foregoing reasons, we grant the plaintiff’s claim against both defendants with damages to be assessed. We also order the defendants to bear the costs of this trial on liability, to be taxed if not agreed following the assessment of the damages. Costs of the assessment will be dealt with separately.


Probably nothing major, but still noteworthy.

Former Protasco director charged with RM 68 Million fraud

From Bernama:


"A former director of Protasco Bhd was charged in the Ampang Sessions Court today with fraud involving RM68 million, and making a false declaration, four years ago.

Datuk Tey Por Yee, 40, claimed trial to both charges.

On the first charge, he is accused of concealing information from the company's board of directors and officers that he had a vested interest in a company, PT Anglo Slavic Utama in Indonesia.

In so doing, he allegedly misled the victims into entering into an oil and gas investment agreement with PT Anglo Slavic Utama through the purchase of 63 per cent of PT Anglo Slavic's shares in Indonesia worth USD22 million (RM68,393,170).

The payment for the shares was allegedly channeled in stages to two CIMB PT ASU accounts.

Tey is accused of committing the offence at Protasco Bhd's office at Corporate Building Unipark Suria, Jalan Ikram-Uniten, Kajang here, between November 2012 and Jan 30, 2014.

On the second charge, he allegedly made a sworn false statement before Wern Li Morsingh, a Commissioner of Oaths that he did not have any vested interests in PT Anglo Slavic Utama, whether as a director or shareholder.

He is accused of committing the offence in the company's conference room at the same place on July 25, 2014."


Almost exactly three years ago I wrote "Protasco's Puzzling Purchase", the start of many articles about Protasco.

I wrote:

"The vendor is 99% owned by Anglo Slavic Petrogas Ltd, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, no background is given, a search on the internet returns nothing; who is behind this company, what is their track record?"

In the second instalment of the series of articles I asked the question:

"An anonymous person pointed at the possible role that Adrian Ooi Kock Aun plays in the deal, he was appointed to the board of Protasco just before the deal was announced December 2012. He is the CFO of PT Inovisi Infracom Tbk, an Indonesian listed company that also invests in oil & gas. The guarantees that are given out are based on a large block of shares of PT Inovisi Infracom Tbk. Surely Adrian Ooi must be aware of the identity of this large shareholder who is most likely the person/company behind Anglo Slavic Petrogas, the seller. Should this information not be made public?"


It looks like the announced court case is hitting directly at the above issued raised, it will be interesting to follow.

Another question that remains unanswered: should the Board of Directors of Protasco have been more active in digging for information in this case? The same question can be asked regarding the authorities.

Gates Foundation sues Petrobas

From the BBC:


The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has sued the Brazilian state-owned oil company, Petrobras for investment losses due to corruption.

The charity accuses Petrobras of misrepresenting its operations and financial situation to raise billions of dollars.

Prosecutors in Brazil are investigating Petrobras executives for involvement in a massive kickback scheme.

Petrobras has argued the scandal does not involve the company as a whole.

It has said the scandal was caused by contractors, corrupt politicians and a few employees and should not tarnish the company.

The Foundation said its portfolio managers had questioned Petrobras executives about its financial data, but were misled in a "series of materially false and misleading written and oral statements and/or omissions by Petrobras."

Huge difficulties

Petrobras is already facing a number of other US class-action lawsuits.

The scandal has caused huge political difficulties for the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is not under investigation and has denied all knowledge of the scheme.

Prosecutors have said more than $2bn (£1.32bn) of bribes were paid over a decade, mainly to Petrobras executives from construction and engineering companies.

Some of the money was then passed on to political parties including the governing Workers' Party.

On Monday, the former treasurer of the Workers' Party, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted of receiving bribes from Petrobras contractors and distributing them to members of the ruling party.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also suing Petrobras's auditors, a local affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers which it says played a key role in attesting to Petrobras financial statements.


Larger shareholders should consider taking the same action in similar cases in Malaysia, given the slow enforcement, with often low punishment (if any). It would make future perpetrators think twice before cooking the books or making misleading statements. Also auditors should be more inclined to step up their game when they know that the chance of being sued by shareholders of the company they audit is quite high.

Scan files legal action against Bursa Malaysia (2)

As more or less could be expected, Scan lost its case again Bursa Malaysia, according to this announcement.

I hope they won't appeal and just mend their business, which is in a bad shape, the company lost RM 7.1M in 2014 and 2.6M in 2013, with revenue in 2014 less than half of that in 2013.

According to this announcement:


"..... in the exercise of the powers under Rule 1.03 of the ACE LR, SCN is hereby classified as a GN3 Company pursuant to GN3 of the ACE LR with effect from 18 May 2015 and the Company is required to ensure strict adherence with its obligations under GN3 of the ACE LR."

Scan files legal action against Bursa Malaysia

It does not often happen, but Scan Associates Bhd. did just did that, it filed a legal action against Bursa Malaysia, according to this announcement.


The company wishes to announce that bursa Malaysia securities bhd(BM) had at 6pm on 8.5.2015 issued a directive for the company to announce that the company had triggered rules 2.1(b) and (c)  of GN 3 based on the company 's Q4 2014 results.

In any event,  the company has no means to make such announcement as the company Secretary had resigned on the same day.

The company disagrees with the directive and has appointed solicitors,  Messrs lim,  chong,  phang & Amy to file a legal action against BM. The suit was filed on 10.5.2015 against BM to,  inter alia,  nullify the directive and to seek damages from BM. (The Suit).

The suit filed in the high Court in Kuala Lumpur bearing suit number 22ncc-130-05/2015.

Further to that,  the high Court had on 11.5.2015 heard the company 's application and granted an ad interim injunction to restrain BM to implement the reclassification of the company. The ad interim injunction will be enforceable and binding until the High Court makes a decision at 4pm on 18.5.2015.


A rather peculiar announcement (besides the inconsistent usage of capital letters and spacing) in which the company blames the fact that it had no company secretary to make such an announcement.

For more information, please read this article on Kinibiz (behind paywall).

MOL Global: class-action suits are filed

Four US law firms have filed class action suits against MOL Global, according to this article in The Star.

One complaint can be found here, the most important paragraphs:

Another complaint can be found here:


The Complaint alleges that defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose to MOL Global investors that: (1) MOL Global was overstating the revenue and profit derived from the Company’s business and operations; (2) the Company’s  actual business model could not sustain the growth trends described in the IPO offering documents; (3) MOL Global would not be able to report its third quarter 2014 financial results on November 21, 2014, as previously stated; and (4), as a result of the foregoing, the Company’s financial statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.


I guess we need to wait for more specific information how things will unfold.

I am not a lawyer, although a big fan of TV-series like "Suits" and "Boston Legal". Are we going to see Harvey Specter and Alan Shore cross examining Vincent Tan and Ganesh Kumar Bangah?

MOL Global is currently trading at USD 2.85, 77% down from its IPO price.

It is raining court cases in Singapore penny stock saga (2)

Some more articles:

More stakeholders take court action

Lawsuits may provide answers on $8b meltdown  

Broker seeks to recover US$68m from 10 clients (the full  article of which I gave only 4 paragraphs yesterday)


"The Monetary Authority of Singapore and the SGX are "conducting an extensive review of the activities around these stocks".

Hopefully, they will be able to give the investing public some answers as to what exactly transpired in those frantic days.

It is raining court cases in Singapore penny stock saga

According to this article Interactive Brokers has joined in the ever growing list of court cases regarding the penny stock saga involving companies like Asiasons Capital, Blumont Group, LionGold Corp and Innopac Holdings, companies with Malaysian links:


"Global broking giant Interactive Brokers has launched the largest legal action so far in the wake of October's penny stock collapse, taking aim at at least 10 clients as it seeks to recover about US$68 million of losses.

BT understands that Interactive Brokers launched arbitration proceedings earlier this month against 10 individuals and entities through the American Arbitration Association.

Pending the start of arbitration proceedings, the global broker has also obtained court orders in Singapore and Malaysia to freeze the assets of eight of those clients, including certain directors and shareholders of Asiasons Capital, Blumont Group, LionGold Corp and Innopac Holdings - four of the stocks at the centre of last month's selldowns.

According to court documents inspected by The Business Times and confirmed by sources, Interactive Brokers on Nov 8 sought court orders to freeze the assets of Malaysian nationals Neo Kim Hock, Peter Chen Hing Woon, Tan Boon Kiat, Quah Su-Ling, Lee Chai Huat and Kuan Ah Ming; and two British Virgin Islands-registered companies, Sun Spirit Group Ltd and Neptune Capital Group Ltd."


Earlier on it was announced that Goldman Sachs is being sued for its part in this drama, recent articles can be found here and here.

I have blogged before about Goldman Sachs and its "ethics" (or rather lack of it), here is another (unrelated) case, as reported by The Independent:


Adrian Bailey, chair of the Business Select Committee, which is due to question Mr Cable on Wednesday, said: “It’s totally unacceptable. I don’t see how you can act as adviser to the Government and then profit from the advice you have given them. It is a conflict of interest.”

Malaysian govt agencies squatting on KL land

Front page article today from The Business Times (Singapore):

Ruling may lead to huge damages claims, affect major govt complex in KL

"A large plot of land in Kuala Lumpur occupied by various government agencies for almost three decades has been found to have been illegally acquired by the government of the-then British Malaya in 1956 in a unanimous court ruling that could open Putrajaya to potential damages running into the hundreds of millions of ringgit

In late November, the Federal Court refused leave to government counsel to appeal a decision by the Court of Appeal that decided that the 1956 acquisition by the government of 263.3 acres of land belonging to private firm Semantan Estates (1952) was not "lawfully" executed and that the government had been acting as "a trespasser" since then,

The title under which the land is held was prepared in the 1950s and would have been changed by now so it isn't clear what the area includes exactly as it is now highly developed. Even so, it would almost certainly include the Jalan Duta Government Complex which includes the Internal Revenue Board, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and two bank branches including CIMB.

But what isn't clear is whether the land in question extends out into the immediate vicinity of the government complex. That is possible as the complex appears to take up far less than 263 acres. If so, it could include buildings like the High Court Complex, the National Archives' building, the Federal Territories Mosque, even part of the new palace of the Malaysian King."

- It will put paid to a proposal to privatise the Jalan Duta Government Complex

- It will likely cost the government dearly, probably several hundreds of millions of RM

I love court cases where the underdog wins. The case has dragged on for some time (60 years!), but better late than never.