Man faces daily RM20,000 fine for refusing to split RM60mil matrimonial assets

High Court gives the 75-year-old 30 days to abide by the ruling or risk going to jail.

Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Justice Sumathi Murugiah said the husband had breached the post-trial order and the consequential order beyond a reasonable doubt.

KUALA LUMPUR:

 The High Court here has imposed a daily fine of RM20,000 on a 75-year-old man until he complies with an order to equally divide his matrimonial assets with his wife following their judicial separation.

Justice Sumathi Murugiah said the husband, anonymised as PAI, had breached the post-trial order and the consequential order beyond a reasonable doubt.

In her ruling last week, following contempt proceedings initiated by the 73-year-old wife, identified as HAI, the judge gave the husband 30 days to comply with the ruling made last year or risk imprisonment.

In the interim, she imposed a daily fine of RM20,000.

The committal application concerned the husband’s failure to comply with the judgment delivered on Nov 24, 2024, in which the wife was awarded half of the matrimonial assets.

In an affidavit filed in court this year, the wife said the assets, movable and immovable, amounted to about RM60 million.

Under the post-trial order, the parties were required to obtain joint valuations of the matrimonial assets.

When this was not carried out, the court issued a consequential order on Feb 25, directing the husband to bear the valuer’s fees.

Lawyers Goh Siu Lin and Denise Lim appeared for the wife, while counsel Shamesh Jeevaretnam and Tan Zhe Yoong represented the husband.

On Nov 24 last year, Justice Evrol Mariette Peters, who was the trial judge, ordered the equal division of the couple’s matrimonial assets.

Peters, who is now a Court of Appeal judge, also ordered a 38-year-old woman, named as a co-respondent in the suit, to pay HAI RM200,000 in damages for her role in ruining a marriage that had spanned five decades.

The husband denied cheating on his wife, and claimed to be suffering from erectile dysfunction.

They were married in 1977 and the wife made undeniable sacrifices to support the husband’s professional and business success, said Peters.

The wife claimed that in September 2022, the husband confessed to an adulterous relationship with his mistress.

A month later, HAI filed a petition for judicial separation, claiming spousal maintenance. She requested half the value of all movable and immovable property accrued during their marriage. - FMT