PUTRAJAYA: The Federal Court here today granted an application by corporate lawyer Datuk Sreesanthan Eliathamby to obtain leave to pursue his appeal against the decision of the High Court that found him to have engaged in insider trading of Worldwide Holdings Bhd shares in 2006.
The leave application was allowed by the court’s three-panel judges comprising Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Sebli and Federal Court judge Datuk Nordin Hassan.
Justice Tengku Maimun also allowed leave for the questions of law posed by Sreesanthan to be determined by the Federal Court.
One of the legal questions is whether the Attorney-General’s consent is required in law when the Security Commission commences civil proceedings in relation to an offence for insider trading.
In November 2020, the High Court ruled that Sreesanthan had engaged in insider trading of the company shares.
The High Court ordered him to pay the Securities Commission (SC) RM1.99 million, which was three times the profits gained as a result of insider trading.
Sreesanthan was also ordered to pay the SC a civil penalty of RM1 million and barred from being a director of any listed company for 10 years from Nov 18, 2020.
The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision on Sept 6, 2022, resulting in Sreesanthan applying for leave to appeal to the Federal Court.
Sreesanthan was alleged to have acquired a total of 600,000 Worldwide shares between June 7 and July 11, 2006 while in possession of material non-public information relating to the proposed privatisation of Worldwide by Perbadanan Kemajuan Negeri Selangor.
At the material time, Sreesanthan was a senior partner in a law firm engaged to act as the legal adviser of the proposed privatisation of Worldwide.
In today’s online proceeding, Sreesanthan was represented by lawyers Datuk Dr Gurdial Singh Nijar, Gopal Sreenevasan and Abraham Au while SC was represented by counsel SM Shanmugam.
