27 October 2004
The Editor
Straits Times
I see your report on the hearing of my appeal (Oct 26) gives prominence to what I called the monstrous allegation of the Official Assignee that I had lied to his officer when completing my Statement of Affairs.
Mr Sarjit Singh can assert that the property belongs to me. The truth is I am not the owner of the property at the present time. I have a claim which has to be decided by the Malaysian courts.
I would ask, since you always claim that you afford a right of reply, that you now publish this letter. I had informed the court of what question was asked of me by the officer from the OA completing my Statement of Affairs and what my reply was and that my answer was nothing but the truth.
Your report omits altogether that in court, I accused the Official Assignee of several things:
(1) that he had failed to discharge his duties properly as required of him under the Act;
(2) that he had failed to take any action to collect monies that were due to me from the other defendants in the action brought by S Jayakumar;
(3) that he had failed to collect from S Jayakumar the $66,666.66 which Jayakumar had seized from me after bankruptcy proceedings had been taken against me which I said violated the bankruptcy law;
(4) that he had failed to collect monies under a court order directing M Loganathan to pay the sum of $23,000.00 for the benefit of the creditors who had sued me;
(5) that he had failed to collect a sum of $1,500.00 from A Balakrishnan due to me under an Order of Court;
(6) that he faulted to collect from the firm of Drew & Napier, Solicitors for the petitioning creditors, a total of $72,066.00 which they had received from me;
(7) that he refused to tell me what sum was required of me by way of composition that would be fair and equitable to both the creditors and me. He refused simply to answer that question;
(8) that I had asked whether he pursued this line of conduct because he came under the Ministry of which S Jayakumar was head (Ministry of Law) and who was a creditor.
Yours faithfully,
J. B. Jeyaretnam