Breaking down the Tan Sri Syed Yusof Bin Tun Syed Nasir v Zavarco Judgement and why shareholders have been misled and deceived...

What was the importance of this judgement in the first place?

If this court action had succeeded, then Tan Sri  Syed Nasir, past director, chairman and alleged majority shareholder of the Vasseti Group, would have been allowed to vote at a General Meeting.  

Why does he need to vote?

To remove the current board of directors who they claim went rogue. Now, without his shares there is a real danger that there are insufficient shares in order to win the vote to ultimately eject the current board of (rogue) directors. 

Why are we so angry with this judgement?

Very simply, because we've all been misled and lied to... 

The question that you need to ask yourself is, would you have committed to this investment if you had known that Tan Sri Syed Nasir had decided not to personally invest his money to buy 30% of the company.  Our answer is a resounding  NO...  there is not a chance any of us would have committed our funds to Vasseti if we had known the truth... 

Here are several extracts from the judgement and the judge's comments,

"Mr Nasir was interviewed by The Star in Malaysia which ran the story under the headline "Syed Yusof buys into Vasseti [ZB], which is launching its broadband service today" and began: "Kuala Lumpur: Businessman Tan Sri Dyed Yusof Syed Nasir has bought a 30% stake in Vasseti Berhad [ZB]..." This was in line with evidence given to me by Dato Singh who said: "I think Tan Sri invested a lot of money in the company". Dato Singh said this was what he was told at the time (Day 3 p 49 line 12 to p 50 line 23). But Mr Nasir's evidence was that he invested no money in ZB; his 4 million ZB shares were paid for by Mr Sidhu (Day 1 p 32 lines 10-19). When it was put to him that the journalist at The Star had been misled into thinking that he had such confidence in ZB that he had put his own money into it, Mr Nasir said "Well, you know, I mean, it's fully paid, of course it's like your own money, you know, but there is an arrangement of course, you know, will come. This is part of the exercise that for the company to move on." He was asked if it was "part of the image" and said, "Image, yes." This seemed to me to show a willingness to allow people to be misled on an important point which damaged his credibility as a witness."

The Judge concluded the following,

"I conclude that Mr Nasir is not a reliable witness and that where he makes assertions which are not corroborated by contemporaneous documents or other more reliable witnesses I should treat them with care. I conclude from the evidence that he took very little interest in any of the details of the matters he is asked to give evidence upon; that his recollection is unreliable; and that his evidence is not a truly independent recollection but coloured by the context in which he is talking."
My impression from Mr Nasir's evidence and from Mr Sidhu's evidence was that Mr Nasir's contribution was his name, his contacts, and his prestige. He was given shares and a directorship so that he appeared to the outside world to be a major shareholder and director but only the appearance of this mattered; it was not necessary that he should actually be an investor and, in reality, everything was done and decided by Shailen and Mr Sidhu. This ties in with the news report and the (wrong) information given to Dato Singh that Mr Nasir had been willing to pay for his own shares in the business. It was all about appearances, but the appearances did not have to reflect the reality.

"Dato Singh said in cross-examination that he had been told that Mr Nasir "had invested a lot of money" in ZB. This was not correct, as shown by the evidence including the evidence of Mr Nasir: Mr Nasir invested no money in ZB."

So shareholders there you have it, the beginning of the end and part of the reason as to why our investment is now lost.  Tan Sri Syed Nasir had nothing to lose and therefore probably didn't care if the company succeeded or not.  

Later in a separate post, we will demonstrate why we believe, the past board of directors could not have cared-less about your investment and probably the eventual success of the company, which as we later will find out was built on more lies.

To read the judgement again, please click here...