Dasin Retail Trust seeks court order to restrain proceedings against it for 6 months
Source: Business Times
Article Date: 03 Dec 2024
Author: Ry-Anne Lim
A report has also been filed in connection with certain discovered documents that may relate to suspicious buy-back arrangements at pre-agreed prices.
The trustee-manager of Dasin Retail Trust : CEDU 0% on Monday (Dec 2) said it has filed an application under the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act to restrain proceedings against it for six months.
Under the moratorium, no resolution can be passed for the winding-up of the company, and no proceedings can be commenced or continued against it.
There will also be no appointment of a receiver or manager over any property, or to undertake the trustee-manager.
Additionally, there will be no enforcement order or other legal process against the trust, enforcement action to repossess assets held by the trust, or enforcement of lease violations without court permission.
For a period of 30 days after the trustee-manager’s application – or until the court decides on the application, whichever comes first – no winding-up orders can be made. Nor can any receivers be appointed, and legal or enforcement actions cannot be issued or executed.
Separately, the trust’s board said a report has been lodged with the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) of the Singapore Police Force, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Singapore Exchange Regulation (SGX RegCo) in connection with certain documents discovered in the office previously occupied by Wang Qiu.
Wang is the former chief executive of the trustee-manager, who was fired on Feb 14. The trust did not give further reasons for its decision when this was first announced on Feb 18.
The board said in another bourse filing that the documents may relate to suspicious buy-back arrangements at pre-agreed prices for units of the trust by parties connected to Zhang Zhencheng and his alternate director Zhang Zhongmin. The former is a non-independent and non-executive director of the trustee-manager as well as a substantial unitholder of the trust.
These arrangements may have breached various provisions of the Securities and Futures Act, the board said.
There were reasons to believe that Wang may have been complicit in the buy-back arrangements, it added.
The board also noted that SGX RegCo had written to certain directors, excluding the two, in June and August last year stating that it received public feedback alleging that some “cornerstone investors” in the trust’s initial public offering had entered into buy-back arrangements with the trustee-manager as a condition of their subscription.
The board and key management personnel of the trust were asked if these allegations were true, but the trustee-manager said it was not aware of any such arrangements.
In May this year, SGX RegCo requested additional confirmations on whether such buy-back arrangements involved the two directors and Wang.
Zhang Zhongming then told the trustee-manager that the two directors would like to respond to SGX RegCo’s queries separately.
“The understanding of (the rest of the board) is that Zhang Zhencheng and Zhang Zhongming had not followed up with any response to SGX RegCo as at the time the report was lodged,” said the board.
It highlighted that the majority of directors and the management of the trustee-manager intend to fully cooperate with CAD, MAS and SGX RegCo when needed.
The trustee-manager added that both announcements represent the view of most of the board, save for the two directors in question, who are believed to have conflicts of interest regarding the issues.
It will update shareholders in due course when it becomes aware of any material development.
Units of Dasin Retail Trust closed at S$0.032 on Monday, down 3 per cent or S$0.001, prior to the announcement.
Source: Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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