Former Kuala Dimensi Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Tiong King Sing has declined to accede to former transport minister Ong Tee Keat’s preconditions to resolve their disputes in the suits filed by them.

With the development, the two suits will go for full trial, which has been fixed for five days, beginning July 8, next year.

At today’s proceedings, the parties met High Court judge Hue Siew Kheng in chambers when the matter came up for case management for them to inform the judge on whether there was possibility of mediation to resolve the suits.

Hue had earlier, suggested to both parties to look into such a possibility.

Following that, on July 3, Ong’s solicitor had written to Tiong’s solicitors and set two preconditions for mediation.

azlan Ong’s counsel, Chan Tse Yuen, told reporters that on Aug 30, Tiong’s solicitors had replied to Ong’s letter and declined to accede to Ong’s preconditions.

The two preconditions are that Tiong will forthwith, openly declare unreserved and unqualified retractions of all allegations against Ong, and will further publish an unreserved and unqualified apology to the former transport minister in sufficiently prominent spaces of the major newspapers.

In August 2009, Ong, who was also MCA president then, filed a RM500 million defamation suit against Tiong, claiming he had issued a defamatory statement which was published in the Malaysiakini website on Aug 12, the same year.

He claimed that the statement was malicious and in bad faith, to prevent a fair and correct investigation into the abuse of funds in the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) project and Kuala Dimensi’s role in the affair.   

Kuala Dimensi is the turnkey contractor for the PKFZ project.

Tiong, who is Bintulu member of parliament, also filed a suit against Ong to recover RM10 million which he claimed to have handed over to Ong as donation to MCA.

- Bernama