by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General Tanjong, Li HI Kit Siang, in Petaling Java on Saturday, 17th July 1993:
DAP gives the KLSE Chairman, Nik Mohamed Din Nik Yusuf 48 hours to reveal the identity of the ‘biggest defaulter’ in the Union Paper shares scandal who short-sold more than one million shares or DAP will take this issue to Parliament, on Monday
DAP gives the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) Chairman, Nik Mohamed Din Nik Yusuf 48 hours to reveal the identity of the ‘biggest defaulter’ in the Union Paper shares scandal who short-sold more than one million shares or DAP will take this issue to Parliament on Monday.
At his now-famous two-hour press conference last Tuesday, Nik Din said KLSE had identified 12 individuals for failing to deliver 3,32 million Union Paper Holdings Bhd. shares which were the subject of a buying-in exercise on July 9.
Nik Din said that these 12 traded through eight stockbroking firms and that the ‘defaulters’ included one individual who ‘defaulted’ in slightly more than a million shares.
There are two things which are most, significant about this press conference by the KLSE Chairman: Firstly, his attempt to find loopholes in the Securities Industry Act for these 12 who had caused so much losses and hardships to the small investors and chaos to the stock exchange with their short-selling, as claiming that “There is no evidence that they short sold” and that “they could have failed to deliver because they were away”!
Secondly, Nik Din’s attempt to hide the identities of these 12 ‘defaulters’, to the extent that the KLSE claimed that “None of the names are familiar to us yet”.
This statement has raised eye-brows in the stock market for the person who led the 12 ‘defaulters’ with more than a million shares is a very prominent personality who should be familiar to even ordinary Malaysians who do not buy shares. Nik Din is clearly to protect this personality when he claims that “none of the names are familiar to us yet”.
Why is Nik Din trying to cover up the identity of this personality and that of eleven others, when his first priority must be to protect, the interests of the small investors and to bring to justice all those who had undermined the KLSE from becoming an orderly, fair and transparent, marketplace?
If Nik Din does not reveal the identity of this chief ‘defaulter1 and those of the other 11, then the DAP will raise this issue in Parliament when it resumes on Monday.
The Union Paper shares scam has become a very serious test for all the regulatory authorities for the Malaysian stock market, the KLSE and the Securities Commission, as well as whether after two years as Finance Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has lost his ‘fire’ he showed when he took over the Treasury in 1991 to declare war on corporate fraud and stock market abuses.
If Nik Din does not reveal the identity of the 11 ‘default sellers’ of the Union Paper shares scandal in the next 48 hours, Anwar Ibrahim should announce the identity of these 12 individuals in the Dewan Rakyat on Monday.