KUALA LUMPUR (July 10): PPB Group Bhd said it is not in the know as to whether its Singapore-listed associate Wilmar International Ltd is involved in the deforestation as alleged recently by Greenpeace, but assured that all is “business as usual”. 

“It is business as usual,” PPB chairman Tan Sri Datuk Oh Siew Nam told a press conference, after the group’s extraordinary general meeting (EGM) here today. 

“A lot of these problems have both sides of the story. We are not there, so I think we should not talk about things that we don’t know,” Oh added. 

He likened the issue to the European Union’s anti palm-oil campaign, adding it could be due to competition that the allegation surfaced. 

“There’ll always be people who want to be against you, for whatever reasons,” he lamented. 

On July 5, two senior executives of Wilmar, the world’s largest palm oil trader, have resigned days after a Greenpeace report linked them to an Indonesian firm accused of deforestation. 

The environmental group said three plantation companies owned by Gama Corp had cleared thousands of hectares of Indonesia’s Papua and West Kalimantan provinces.

The Wilmar executives who resigned were co-founder Martua Sitorus and Indonesia head Hendri Saksti. 

Gama Corp is owned by Sitorus, and his brother Ganda. Saksti is Sitorus' brother-in-law. 

Wilmar had said it has no control, management or otherwise, over Gama Corp and that executives with familial ties with Gama Corp do not hold any decision-making power or influence on its sustainability policy. 

Bursa Malaysia-listed PPB owns 18.55% of Wilmar, which accounted for 78% of its 2017 profit. 

Meanwhile, at today’s EGM, shareholders approved of a bonus issue of up to 237.1 million PPB shares on a one-for-five basis.

At noon break, shares of PPB settled two sen or 0.1% higher at RM19.70, valuing the group at a market capitalisation of RM23.33 billion.