Sunday, June 27, 2010

Is SC coercing messengers of news to save culprit?

Dedicating James Taylor's "You've Got A Friend" to the affected journalists

The latest from Rocky Bru here reported business journalist being held up by Securities Commission for interrogation.

The grapevine from the strange looking building at Mont Kiara is saying the interrogation lasted as long as 8 hours. Yes, I repeat again. BK Siddhu of The Star or Azlan Abu Bakar of Business Times was interrogated for 8 hours!

They had been following and reporting the Kenmark debacle in their papers. Kenmark is a public listed furniture company which was reprimanded by Bursa for late submission of their quarterly report.

Then strangely, it's Taiwanese MD, John Hwang disappeared causing share prices to crash on May 31st. If the issue is about Directors' fiduciary duty liek Sime Darby (resign please Tun Musa Hitam), there is another twist to it.

Few major shareholders, namely Dato Ishak Ismail and Taiwanese Chen Wen-Ling was reported to have sold their shares in the open market and cease to be major shareholders. This happened before EON Bank sealed their Klang factory, thus turning Kenmark into a PN17 company.

Securities Commission (SC) obtained an exparte injunction on Ishak Ismail - a market rigger, and Anwar's financier and crony from the market go-go days of the nineties - from getting a hand on his share sales proceed.

By the look of it, it is clear who are the possible law offenders and suspects. But why is SC being hard on the messengers of news?

Isn't it strange?

They were never hard on many past offenders of Securities law and even held back investigation on few high profile cases.
There is the likelihood that they will not be hard on repeat offender, Ishak Ismail and the Taiwanese. Why the reporters?

More strange things.

Isn't it strange that DAP is not making as much noises as the death of the assistant to DAP Assemblymen, the late Teoh Beng Hock? PKR is quiet as a stutter cat since Ishak is a crony of Anwar.

PAS is as calm as a flame on a lit candle in a church. They are not too dumb to understand, I hope.

Neither are we hearing Mr Goblok-isation, Khairy raising any hue and cry over the inappropriate rough treatment of business journalist by Securities Commission on the "messengers" and not the culprit in the Kenmark debacle.

Ah ... here is another puzzling contract renewal by Najib. How my memory failed me.
This is not strange.

Isn't the SC Chairperson, Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar the person that was in cahoot and threatened by Khairy in the ECM Libra's rape of Avenue Capital?

Zarinah's family through her sister is a close family friend of Tun Abdullah. She wouldn't dare interrogate Khairy, with Tun Abdullah being the person who appointed her, would she?

Immediately after the Avenue Capital EGM that approved the takeover by ECM Libra, Zarinah covered them up by only mentioning Iris Corporation for committing impropriety in the papers the next day. Macam betul saja.

Zarinah's inconsistencies was not limited to just ECM Libra takeover of Avenue. Read Bigdog here. He's researched quite a few.

Financial journalism under Securities Act

Despite the mainstream newspapers "assisting" SC to cover their incompetence and impropriety under pretext of public relation, SC treated these business journalists badly and all MSM newspaper should boycott and blackout SC in protest.

There is no basis for SC to subject the journalist for such long and suspiciously abusive interrogation. They are merely reporting the event and are not suspected offenders.

Other than the licensed representative of licensed operating companies to trade and advise on securities, the Securities Industry Act (copy in my possession is the 1990 version) authorised financial journalists of licensed newspaper to write on securities including public listed companies.

It means financial journalist are not committing any illegal act under the SIA for reporting on a public listed company.

In the old Act of 1983, the authority (in this case Securities Commission) could request newspaper publishers for the name and address of financial journalist.

This can be understood to mean SC is empowered to investigate financial journalist for any offenses such as collaborating to rig market or insider trading in their reporting.

But this is merely reporting past event and no share recommendation is made, directly or indirectly?

Insidious SC

The murmurs amongst friends in journalism is that SC coerced the journalists to reveal their source of information on Ishak's share trading. This is highly improper because journalism ethics demand secrecy of their source.

It is very unfair because journalist will lose their integrity and reputation. Their sources will not trust to reveal information and leads. SC's action is as good as denying them of their rice bowl and trampling on free press.

It is also a great injustice because journalist have no option but to face the consequences for refusing to reveal their sources.

The puzzling issue here is: Why did SC resorted to coerce the journalist for information?

Unless there is an intention to divert attention or save the suspects and culprit, there is no reason to be hard on the journalists. After all, they are only third party source of information. SC can easily get the information from directly at the source.

Information on all shares traded is available in records in the Bursa's and stockbroking system. These days there are no more nominee companies fronting the identity of buyers and sellers. All have to be divulge. When Ishak used to have other person as front, his proxies could be detected.

Are the young pretend-to-know-all wannabees of the financial market, with their sophisticated equipments and more transparent security law, admitting to us ole timer that they can't investigate Ishak?

The suspicion again is SC wants to coverup the culprit. By going after journalist, they are scaring them from reporting the news. Any attention on the journalist being investigated will diver attention from investigation on the actual culprit.

Eh ... shame la Khairy the "Goblok"-isation generation!

4 comments:

Donplaypuks® said...

The SC is surely jumping the gun here by harassing reporters?

It can get most of the trading info through KLSE and its affiliated broking firms and remisiers to judge if there was any insider trading and/or fraud.

And it is on the cards that something criminal took place because the major shareholders and directors of Kenmark skipped the country and did not announce to KLSE the sale of their controllig shareholdings to Ishak!!

The 1st thing the SC should have done is to head to Taiwan and seek co-operation from the legal authorities to extradite the Taiwanese shareholders of Kenmark.

But, kudos to the SC for freezing Ishak's bank account so justice can be served!

dpp
we are all of 1 race, the Human Race

Anonymous said...

Don't forget about the listing of Lityan early of the year. SC has approved 1mn shares to be allocated to Ismee, CEO of Tabung Haji, and not to Tabung Haji itself. WTF!

Anonymous said...

Voice,

Hmmmm... Maybe the SC should swop roles with MACC!!

Would they be able to do a better job than MACC?!!

Only those with strong connections can hold and interrogate others for longer...





Joe Black

Ishak Ismail said...

Dear Bro.

I read your articles and you need to make some correction.

You said I sold the Kenmark shares before EON bank seal the factory.This is not true.The shares was bought by my family trustee after EON bank have seal the factory.

Bro,You also accuse me of being Anwar financier and crony in the 90.This is very serious allegation.Yes I was close to Anwar in the 90 because i was appointed by him to be Permatang Pauh UMNO division secretary.Am I his crony.The answer is NO.Remember when Tun Mahathis revealed all the Anwar cronies ,my name was not there.

My first corporate move in the 90 by acquiring the shares of Idris Hydrulic was with the help of Tun Daim.The money was given to me by Tan Sri Tajuddin.

Bro,as a Muslim I can swear that I never give any money to PKR or Anwar to fund his political struggle and I am still an UMNO member in Permatang Pauh.

salam

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