KUALA LUMPUR: The claim that Bukit Aman raided an oil and gas engineering company’s office has been refuted. Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Comm Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf clarified that investigators visited the company premises to collect documents, rather than conduct a raid.
“It wasn’t a raid. We went to the premises and collected some documents from the company,” explained Comm Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf. “Documents were also collected from the company secretary for investigation. That much I can confirm as reported by my officers,” he said when contacted on Friday.
The offices of KNM Group Berhad were reported to have been raided on Wednesday through a message circulated on WhatsApp. The message claimed that police had seized many documents connected to the company.
Once a favorite of investors, KNM Group Bhd now finds itself among distressed companies after slipping into the Practice Note 17 (PN17) category. StarBizWeek reported in November last year that the company shares plunged to five sen each, with current liabilities exceeding current assets and with the group only foreseeing a return to profitability in the next “two to three years.
It was also reported that cash crunch issues were limiting KNM from taking on more new projects. The root cause of KNM’s struggles can be traced back to a series of acquisitions the group made many years ago.
Executive chairman Tan Sri Zulhasnan Rafique was quoted saying that KNM would not have slipped into PN17 had the proposed disposal of its entire stake in Borsig GmbH, a German-based process equipment manufacturer, been completed before the deadline of KNM’s financial audit.
In September this year, a group of shareholders sought to remove KNM’s existing directors.
