Members retract suit against Malay Chamber of Commerce

Members of the Malay Chamber of Commerce Malaysia had wanted an EGM to be chaired by deputy president Syed Hussein Alhabshee. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: The 17 members of the Malay Chamber of Commerce Malaysia (DPMM) who sought a court order for it to hold an extraordinary general meeting and explain the spending of a RM5 million allocation have applied to withdraw the suit.

DPMM secretary-general Don Nazwin Don Wahab said in a statement that he had been informed that the judge would be ruling on Nov 21 on the request.

The 17 members had filed the suit on Sept 13 against DPMM president Rizal Faris Mohideen Abdul Kadir, Nazwin and DPMM as the first, second and third defendants, respectively.

“When these allegations surfaced, we took the claims seriously and had asked both the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate these claims since September 2018.

“However, the 17 members appeared to have preferred to judge us even before the investigations were completed and took this matter prejudicially to the courts.

“And for this action, the 17 members have challenged our DPMM constitution, put our nationwide members at risk, and have tarnished the reputation of the Malay Chamber of Commerce Malaysia.

“Furthermore, they have wasted the precious time and resources of our Malaysian legal system through their actions of filing a suit and now retracting it,” Nazwin said.

In their suit, the plaintiffs claimed that in May 2018, Rizal Faris had spent RM5 million allocated to DPMM by the Prime Minister’s Department, but the amount was not deposited into DPMM’s account.

Instead, it was channelled into Yayasan DPMM Pulau Pinang Berhad’s account without the approval of the DPMM executive council.

They also claimed RM1 million was credited to DPMM from a company known as “Redberry” and Rizal Faris had decided to use the money for an election campaign, also without the approval of DPMM’s executive council.

On the sale of a property owned by DPMM in Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, the plaintiffs claimed that DPMM should have obtained RM11.6 million for it and RM5.6 million was supposed to have been paid to DPMM, but only RM200,000 had been deposited so far, while RM5.4 million was spent for the 14th general election with the approval of the DPMM executive council.

The plaintiffs claimed that the first defendant failed to provide a reasonable explanation on the matter despite being questioned during the executive council meeting.

They were seeking a court order for an EGM to be called and the meeting to be chaired by DPMM deputy president Syed Hussein Alhabshee. -FMT