Six senior officials of Malaysia's gold investment company have been slapped with over 900 counts of money laundering and fraud involving a staggering sum of RM 5.5 billion.
The long list of offences were committed by Genneva Malaysia Sdn Bhd's six officials - directors Datuk Philip Lim Jit Meng and Datuk Tan Liang Keat, general manager Lim Kah Heng, and business advisers Datuk Ng Poh Weng, Datuk Marcus Yee Yuen Seng and Datuk Chin Wai Leong.
Charges were framed against the six for activities performed between January 2011 and December 2012.
There are 916 money laundering cases faced by the six officials under Section 4(1)(a) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 which could invite fine of up to RM 5 million or a maximum jail term of five years or both.
Further, there are eight counts of illegal deposit taking, three charges of making false statements in an advertisement and two counts of receiving deposits by the gold company without proper license.
Along with the gold company Genneva, another sister company Success Attitude Sdn Bhd also faces similar eight counts.
Philip, who is director to both Genneva and Success Attitude, alone faces a shocking 246 charges, while Tan, director of Genneva, has 226 counts against him. General manager Lim faces 16 charges and company's advisors Ng, Marcus and Chin face 155, 17 and 23 charges respectively.
Four former directors of the company were granted bail for RM1.1 million each, while advisors Marcus and Chin were allowed bail for RM100,000 each. The accused were ordered to submit their passports.
The next hearing of the high-profile case has been set for April 7-24 next year where the defence is expected to produce 50 witnesses. A request for joint trail of the six accused was accepted by the jury.
