I refer to news surrounding the purchase of two condominiums by National Feedlot Corporation Sdn Bhd (NFC) and the decision by the attorney-general to drop the case due to a lack of evidence .

All that is well and fine, but to me, two serious questions have yet to be answered and one of it has not been brought up by anybody in any of the discussions and comments to date.

Firstly, the perception is that the case against NFC had been dropped - with regard to the condominium purchases - because there was a resolution by its board of directors having approved the purchase.

There had been a question of whether this was done before or after the purchase, which to me is a moot point - just because there is a resolution does not make an action of a company legal.

For example, what if a company vide its board of directors passes a resolution not pay taxes to the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM), Employees Provident Fund’s (EPF) and GST to customs? Does it make the actions of the company legal and does it mean no prosecution can be brought against the company? No, of course not, as that will be bizarre.

A board resolution cannot make an illegal action by a company legal. A board resolution can only approve administratively whatever action that the company can enter into legally so in this case, it is not relevant if the board had approved the condominium purchases or not.

The question should be if the company had committed more offences by using money approved by the government to fund feedlots for any other purpose; if the answer is yes, then the whole board should be charged as they had approved it, not just the chairperson.

The only person entitled to give approval would be the government itself as they had set the rules of the loan, and there was no indication that this approval was sought or given by the government.

Secondly, the conditions and terms for the disbursement of the loan to NFC by the government were in stages upon incurring the expenditure. This entails NFC to submit to them the necessary supporting documents of expenses related to the project, and in turn, the government will release the loan in part until it is fully utilised.

If this was the case, how on earth did NFC had surplus to buy condominiums as the reason given was idle funds were used to fund their purchase for efficient cash management?

Was it that loan defrayed for different expenses were used to buy the condos or did the approving officer(s) blindly approved the part release of the loan without checking or seeing supporting documents? If this was the case, then the approving officer should be charged with negligence and not being competent at his/her job.