KUALA LUMPUR (April 7): The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) has successfully proven its claim in a civil suit against Datuk Raymond Yap Wee Hin, a former deputy chairman of Patimas Computers Bhd, for insider trading.

In allowing the claim on Thursday (April 7), the High Court declared that Yap had breached the relevant securities laws, the SC said in a statement.

Judicial Commissioner Adlin Abdul Majid ordered Yap to pay a sum of RM3.28 million being an amount equal to three times the losses avoided by him as a result of the insider trading, the SC said in a statement.

Yap was also ordered to pay the SC a civil penalty of RM1 million and has been barred from being a director of any public listed company for a period of five years. The regulator was also awarded costs of RM100,000.

In the suit filed in 2020, the SC claimed that Yap had breached the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007 when he disposed of  43,823,600 Patimas shares held by Law Siew Ngoh, former managing director of Patimas, from June to July 2012.

He committed this breach whilst in possession of material, non-public information relating to audit queries and issues regarding the suspicious transactions between Patimas and its top debtors, said the SC.

The regulator said the matter was raised and discussed by Ernst & Young Malaysia, Patimas’ external auditor, during a meeting with the company’s management.

Subsequently, the board of Patimas announced on July 31, 2012 to Bursa Malaysia that the group would not be able to issue the annual audited financial statements by July 31 2012 for the financial period from Jan 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012 due to unresolved significant audit findings/queries.

Patimas was delisted from Bursa Malaysia on March 21, 2014.