KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 9): National Feedlot Corp Sdn Bhd (NFCorp) chairman Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Salleh Ismail on Wednesday (Nov 9) has claimed that Putrajaya had not been fair to the defendants as the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) project helmed by him was set up for failure due to a “typhoon” of events by the Government.

Testifying in his defence at the High Court in the Government's RM250 million civil suit against NFCorp, himself and nine others, Salleh said the project was doomed to fail from the start as the then government had frozen the company’s accounts.

He said that when the loan was given in around 2008-2009, there was a three-year grace period according to the loan facility agreement between the Government and NFCorp, and this meant that the first repayment of the loan was due in or about 2011-2012.

However, Salleh testified that they could not pay back the loan because NFCorp's accounts were frozen at that time. He said that as the account freezing happened fast, he could not do anything about it.

“Everything happened very fast in 2011, our accounts were frozen. We were trying to resolve this with Amla (Anti-Money Laundering Act) authorities.

“Then they seized our money in 2012, everything happened like a typhoon, we could not do much,” said Salleh, who was subject to cross-examination by senior federal counsel Nurhafizza Azizan.

During the trial before judge Anand Ponnudurai, Salleh had reiterated that the RM253.6 million loan was unable to be repaid as the Government did not provide the necessary infrastructure for the NFC project, such as failure to build an export quality abattoir (EQA) to enable NFCorp to commence full production.

However, it is the Government’s contention that it did not need to build the EQA because NFC had not met the cattle production output for that year.

Nurhafizza had asked Salleh about the number of cattle that NFC was supposed to slaughter in 2010 which fell far short of its targeted output as per its agreement with the Government.

She said that according to an audit report by the Auditor General, NFC only slaughtered 3,000 cows in 2010, when it was supposed to slaughter 6,000.

Nurhafizza: Referring to the audit, under target of cow production, the production output shows only more than 3,000 cows in 2010. The 6,000 cow target was not met.

Salleh: Yes, because you (the Government) didn’t build the abattoir.

Nurhafizza: For that year, the obligation was not fulfilled by NFCorp?

Salleh: That year there was no abattoir, no matter how much we bring in, we slaughter the cattle, we didn’t have the abattoir.... We cannot fulfil the number because we did not have the abattoir. And it was not built.

This was when the judge quipped that this case was akin to which came first, the chicken or the egg.

“One party is claiming that they cannot meet the target because the abattoir was not built and the Government is claiming that NFCorp didn’t produce enough cattle and there was no need for the abattoir,” Ponnudurai said.

Salleh said in an attempt to meet the target output and the Government not building the EQA, the company was forced to build its own “mini-abattoir”, which was not able to meet the targeted number of cattle per day as per the agreement between NFCorp and the Government.

Salleh also revealed that he and his family had suffered losses from this project because the Government had pulled the plug on the project, adding that they have an RM86.6 million counterclaim against the Government over losses from the project, which was supposed to be located in Gemas, Pahang.

Salleh is represented by Datuk K Kirubakaran and Datuk Seri Rajan Navaratnam.

The Government filed the lawsuit against NFCorp and its chairman Salleh in May 2019 to recover the loan. Salleh is the husband of former Wanita Umno chief Tan Sri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, who was also formerly the minister of women, family and community development.

Also named as defendants in the suit are the couple's three children and seven companies owned by the family, including NFCorp.

They are accused of misappropriating and wrongly using RM118 million out of the RM250 million loan.

The Government is also seeking a declaration from the court to have Salleh's family personally liable for the debt repayment, the RM118 million allegedly misappropriated from the loan and secret profits arising from it, as well as Putrajaya's entitlement to claim equitable title to the properties bought by the defendants using the misappropriated sum.

The case had been on hold since 2021 as the parties were negotiating an out-of-court settlement.

Salleh was slated to take the stand in his defence in January this year, when both sides asked for an adjournment pending the settlement.

Ponnudurai had ordered for the trial to resume from Nov 7 to 11 as the parties had not come to a settlement.