Police Report By DAP National Organising Secretary And MP For Cheras Tan Kok Wai In The Cheras Police Station On 16 January 2006.

I am lodging  a report against prominent businessmen Datuk Halim Saad and Anuar Othman for criminal breach of trust and former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin for abuse of power. My report is based on the judgment by Judge Datuk Gopal Sri Ram's on 12 January 2006 which represented the Court of Appeal’s judgment  on the Metramac Corporation Sdn Bhd (Metramac case) W-02-1009-2003 and W-02-1013-2003. A copy of the Court of Appeal judgment comprising Gopal Sri Ram, Hashim bin Dato' Yusoff and Zulkefli bin Ahmad Makinudin is enclosed.

My report is based on the findings by the Court of Appeal as follows:-

• In or about September 1990, there was a public demonstration at the toll booth established by the defendant along the Cheras highway protesting at the imposition of a toll. The Federal Government stepped in to deal with the situation. By its letter dated 12 September 1990 DBKL asked Syarikat Teratai KG Sdn Bhd (STKG) to suspend the collection of toll at the Cheras tollbooth. This spelled disaster for it was exposed to a loan repayment of RM 40 million which it had planned to pay from toll collection. In the second place, the whole of the shareholders funds amounting to RM 65 million would be wiped out.
   
• DBKL in its letter of 20 October 1990 agreed in principle to take the option of terminating the first concession and paying compensation. But no figure was mentioned although the defendant had put forward an estimated sum of RM 764.2 million as compensation. An appeal to the then Minister of Finance, Tun Daim Zainuddin, fell on deaf ears. He simply told the defendant's then existing shareholders that the Federal Government was not in a position to pay the defendant any compensation.  
   
• By letters dated 12 November, 1990 and 24 November 1990 a company called UEM Bhd, a public limited company made an offer to purchase all the shares in STKG for a sum ofM$97.5 million. The shares were to be purchased by a company nominated by UEM. That company was Metro Juara Sdn. Bhd. which had merely two shareholders who were also its sole directors. These gentlemen were one Anuar Othman and one Dato Halim Saad.  No one in his or her right mind will consider the choice of selling of their shares to Metro Juara at RM 97.5 million as a choice at all. All the independent evidence on record points to this being in reality a crude case of economic duress presenting itself in a more subtle form. 
   
• Now, the offer by UEM to buy out the defendant’s shares for RM 97.5million simply does not make any commercial sense. Here you have a company that has just had its loan and shareholders capital wiped out in one stroke. It had no money in its coffers. It had huge debts. It had no prospects of receiving any compensation from DBKL. So why pay RM 97.5 million for the shares of such a company? The answer is simple enough. Anuar Othman and Dato Halim Saad had something which the plaintiff did not. And that was the patronage of the then Minister of Finance, Tun Daim Zainuddin.
   
• An agreement called the Share Sale Agreement dated 23 January 1991 was executed. Thereafter, the defendant's name was changed to Metramac Corporation Sdn Bhd. Not long after the take over, a strange thing happened. Where doors were once closed to the defendant before its take over, as if by the utterance of a magic spell all bureaucratic doors were opened to the defendant after its take over by Metro Juara. And, as if by the rub of a magic lamp, the Federal Government and DBKL who hitherto claimed to be impoverished suddenly found themselves flush with funds. They were now in a financial position compensate the defendant. The figures are staggering. In one way or another the defendant was to receiving total sum of M$756 million.
   
• In its letter of 30 August 1991, DBKL said that it would pay the defendant RM312 million for the cost of works done. On 13 February 1992, the Federal Government in conjunction with DBKL agreed to subsidies the defendant with a sum of RM405 million to enable the defendant to meet the cost of financing the works to be undertaken under the agreement that was to be entered into between DBKL and the defendant. Mark you, at this point in time, not a stick of work had been done under the new concession agreement. On that very day, that is to say, '13 February 1992, two other events occurred. First, DBKL entered into another concession agreement with the defendant. I will refer to this as the second concession agreement. Second, the Ministry for Public Works gave the defendant an undertaking to pay it RM 32.5 million as "payment for share premium" not "previously taken into account": So far as this case is concerned, the words within quotation marks are meaningless. Because they have no nexus whatsoever to any of the agreements entered into between the several parties. You may well ask how all this could have happened without the direct involvement of Tun Daim. It is also incomprehensible why the defendant as it was constituted immediately before the takeover by Metro Juara was not given this same financial support by the Federal Government. After all, at least two of the pre-takeover shareholders were either Government concerns or Government assisted concerns. And in the case of Tabung Haji, the ultimate beneficiaries would have been the poorer section of our society. I think that it is a fair question to ask why taxpayers' money was channeled into the hands of two private individuals - to profit them - instead of a wider section of the general public. It is not at all clear why the Minister for Finance used his power to favour Anuar Othman and Dato Halim Saad. 
   
• For the sake of completeness, it must be mentioned that the RM 32.5 million mentioned earlier was siphoned out of the defendant's account by Anuar Othman and Dato Halim Saad. An international misappropriation of such a company’s property, moveable or immoveable criminal breach of trust within section 405 of the Penal Code and, if the misappropriation is done by directors, as was the case here, it is the aggravated form of criminal breach of trust under section 409.

By doing so, the two businessmen could face a maximum 20-year jail term with whipping and fine upon conviction. The police should also investigate and take action against Tun Daim for clearly abusing his powers to profit the two individuals at the expense of public interest. This is my report.

Yours faithfully,

TAN KOK WAI

532A, Batu 3 ½ , Jalan Cheras,
56100 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel. No. 03-92857532