Creditor goes to court to place Epicentre under judicial management

Singapore

A CREDITOR of Catalist-listed Epicentre Holdings has applied to place the company under judicial management.

The former Apple reseller's lawyer Oon & Bazul received a letter on Monday stating creditor Goh Chee Hong filed the application with the Singapore High Court.

Epicentre has since instructed Oon & Bazul to accept service of the application and related documents on its behalf, effective Tuesday.

"The company is presently reviewing the application and taking legal advice on its proposed course of action in the application," Epicentre said in a regulatory filing hours late Tuesday night.

Mr Goh had earlier filed a statutory demand dated May 21 claiming a sum of S$3 million arising from a loan that he provided to the company.

He was also one of three creditors who filed statutory demands on Epicentre on May 21 and May 27. Another was ELush T3, which runs Apple reseller iStudio. It also filed a statutory demand on May 21 claiming a sum of about S$0.42 million arising from outstanding trade debts.

Separately, a statutory demand dated May 27 was based on debts amounting to about S$1.56 million owed by the group to Kenneth Lim Tiong Hian, of which S$1.3 million was assigned to a third creditor, Jonathan Lim, who is executive director of Japan IPL Holdings, a subsidiary of Epicentre.

Mr Kenneth Lim, executive chairman and acting chief executive officer of Epicentre, has been uncontactable since May 24, according to the company.

In June, Epicentre received a statutory demand from three of its former independent directors, namely Giang Sovann, Lim Jin Wei and Azman Hisham bin Ja'afar, for a sum of S$50,001 for outstanding directors' fees.

To settle most of its existing liabilities including monies owed to Mr Goh and ELush, Epicentre had earlier proposed to raise funds through a placement of up to 79.7 million new shares. The plan fell through after Mr Kenneth Lim became uncontactable.

On Tuesday, AA Group Holdings got dragged into the Epicentre debacle, when it announced that it had received two statutory demands and one letter of demand from an alleged creditor, over financing agreements allegedly signed on its behalf by Mr Kenneth Lim.

The company said Mr Kenneth Lim "is not and has never been a director, officer or employee of the company or any of its subsidiaries" and did not authorise Mr Kenneth Lim to enter into the agreements on its behalf. It also said it had never entered into such agreements with alleged creditor Gema Blasco Martinez.

AA Group said it has made a police report and is currently seeking legal advice on the matter. It added that it will be responding to Ms Martinez's lawyers and will provide further updates on this matter to shareholders in due course.

Epicentre separately announced on Tuesday that it had appointed Drew Ethan Madacsi as its independent director. According to the filing, Mr Madacsi is currently non-executive chairman of Singapore-listed construction company MMP Resources. He is also currently a director of MMP Resources Japan KK and African Coal Resources, and a senior strategic consultant of Allington Advisory.

Trading in Epicentre's shares has been suspended since May 30.