By KINIBIZ
A licenced audit partner was fined and sentenced to jail after being convicted of abetting a public-listed company in making a misleading statement to Bursa Malaysia more than 10 years ago.
In a statement released yesterday evening, the Securities Commission said the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court found Yue Chi Kin, 47, guilty under section 122B(b)(bb) read together with section 122C(c) of the Securities Industry Act 1983.
The court sentenced Yue to a one-year jail term and slapped a RM400,000 fine. Should Yue fail to pay the fine he would face an additional six months’ jail time.
“This is the first case where the Securities Commission Malaysia had charged an auditor for abetting a public-listed company in making a misleading statement to Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd,” said the commission.
The offence was in respect of United U-Li Corp Bhd’s audited financial results for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2004. According to the Securities Commission, the misleading statement inflated the company’s reported pre-tax profit for the financial year by approximately 26%.
At the time Yue was an audit partner of Messrs Roger Yue, Tan & Associates. The Securities Commission brought charges against him in April 2009 and the trial began in March 2011.
According to the commission, Sessions Court Judge Ahmad Zamzani Mohd Zain ruled that public interest is a paramount consideration for such offences, which should not be underestimated in order to maintain investors’ confidence and market integrity.
The conviction comes one month after another victory for the commission in September 2015, when the High Court affirmed the imprisonment sentence of one year and a fine of RM300,000 meted out by the Sessions Court against two independent directors of Transmile Group Bhd for a similar offence following their trial.
Earlier in April this year, the Court of Appeal held that a total sentence of 18 months imprisonment had to be served by a former CEO of Inix Technologies Holdings Bhd (Inix), for charges of submitting false information to the stock exchange and for providing false information in Inix’s prospectus.
The jail term was imposed in addition to a fine of RM1.1 million imposed on the CEO for the four charges. Two other directors of Inix were required to serve a total of 12 months imprisonment and a fine of RM325,000 each with respect to the false disclosures while a senior accounts executive of the company was required to serve 12 months imprisonment sentence and imposed a fine of RM350,000 for abetting the CEO in carrying out the offences.
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