PROBABLY the “hyper pace” at which the Malaysian courts are expected to deliberate on the slew of charges levelled against ex-premier Datuk Seri Najib Razak has rubbed off on small cap bra maker Caely Holdings Bhd.
On Friday (Aug 26), the Perak-based lingerie manufacturer initiated a lawsuit against its founder Datin Fong Nyok Yoon and her spouse Datuk Chuah Chin Lai who was also Caely’s former managing director (MD) to recover misappropriated funds amounting to RM30.55 mil in wholly owned subsidiary Caely (M) Sdn Bhd (Caely Malaysia).
Caely which appears as the first plaintiff alongside Caely Malaysia as the second plaintiff are also seeking legal action against Fong and Chua who are named as first and second defendants respectively as well as 10 other parties for breach of fiduciary duty as directors.
“The company and Caely Malaysia further brought this action against all the other defendants for their conspiracy with the first and second defendants to cover up the aforesaid misappropriations and breach of fiduciary duty and to stultify the company’s further,” Caely pointed out in a Bursa Malaysia filling.
In line with the above, Caely noted that the 10 defendants had also attempted to remove the current directors by appointing their nominees into the company’s board of directors.
The 10 defendants are Oh Choon Kim; Chin Boon Long; Chong Loong Men; Leong Seng Wui; Kok Kwang Lim; Valhalla Capital Sdn Bhd; Hong Seng Capital Sdn Bhd; Goh Choon Heng; Luhur Sejahtera Sdn Bhd; and Zaidi Zainudin.
As of May 25, Oh held a 21.05% stake in Caely, while the other nine defendants collectively owned 15.92%, according to theedgemarkets.com referring to the group’s statement of claim.
Chuah, who was the group’s MD between October 2002 and April 2021 had a 5.66% stake in Caely while Fong owned 7.4%. She is still sitting in the board of directors as a non-executive director.
Fong has been a director of Caely since October 2002. She was the group’s executive director from December 2020 until March this year. Together with Chuah and Fong, the group of defendants has a 50.01% ownership in Caely.
For the uninitiated, Caely has been embroiled in a host of internal struggles ranging from boardroom tussle to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) freezing the company’s bank accounts to appointment of directors without their consent and ‘back and forth’ removal and reinstatement of directors, just to name a few scuffles.
At the close of Friday’s (Aug 26) trading, Caely was untraded at 30.5 sen with a market capitalisation of RM79 mil. – Aug 28, 2022
