Ex-wife of late Tun Ghafar Baba sues businessman for RM1million

The ex-wife of the late Tun Ghafar Baba, D. Heryati Abdul Rahim, today filed an RM1 million suit against a businessman and his wife for breach of agreement in land ownership.

Heryati filed the suit on Feb 5 through Mssrs Moghan & Co at the High Court Registrar's Office here.

In her originating summons, Heryati named Tan Sri Lau Ban Tin and his wife, Puan Sri Mary Lee Siew Cheng, as the first and second defendants. High Court judge Datuk Hue Siew Keng set May 21 to hear the defendants' application to strike out the suit.

In her supporting affidavit, Heryati claimed that Lau and Mary had failed to transfer to her the ownership of the eight-hectare land in Jelebu based on their agreement on June 20, 2000.

Heryati also claimed that back then, she was still the wife of the former deputy prime minister and together, they owned the shares in Zamrudvest Sdn Bhd, which involved in franchise business for 'EON Dealer and Franchise'.

She said in 2000, she and Ghafar planned to sell the company to the defendants at a cost of RM300,000, excluding the land in Jelebu (owned by the company), and that the land ownership should be transferred to her name soon after the individual grant was issued.

However, she said based on the land office's records, the land ownership had been transferred to Lau on Feb 19, 2004 and to Tengku Ramli Tengku Mohd Kamil on April 16, 2013.

Heryati demanded Lau to re-transfer the land ownership to her or, as an alternative, to pay her a compensation of RM1 million.

Meanwhile, the defendants, in their affidavit-in-reply filed last April 20, said that Heryati, in filing the application, had exceeded the time limit and she had to prove her post in the company first before making the claims.

Furthermore, the first defendant said the land was no longer his as ownership had been transferred to Tengku Ramli, which made the suit futile and should be struck out.

The defendants also claimed that there was a prior agreement between them and Ghafar which allowed the land ownership to be transferred to Lau to settle debt and compensation due to the company.

"The property actually belonged to Zamrudvest Sdn Bhd in which I had given loan to pay various premiums and land charges. My wife and I have no rights to transfer the land ownership to Heryati because we don't own it," they said in the affidavit.

Alias said a standard regulation on service charge has also been submitted to the Attorney General's Chambers for approval and is expected to be issued soon.

He said a follow-up study would be conducted to propose new legislation to regulate service charge in future, especially from the aspect of consumerism.

According to him, KPDNKK has also not set the rate of service charge to be imposed and it is up to the hotels abd restaurants to fix their respective rates up to a maximum of 10 per cent.

"Currently the average service charge rate in the country is 10 per cent and GST is imposed on top of the charge," he said.

Alias said the meeting was also told that hotel and restaurant industry employees collect service charge to accommodate the low basic salary of workers, which could be as low as RM350 despite the implementation of the minimum wage policy.

Commenting on anti-profiteering operations conducted since the imposition of GST, Alias said KPDNKK would be drawing up new strategies to go to the ground in small towns and rural areas starting this weekend.

"We will focus on hawkers at night markets as there are traders who raise prices arbitrarily," he said.

He added that since April 1, 139,425 premises were inspected and 30 investigation papers were being finalised before submitting to the public prosecutor next week.