03/03/2025

MONDAY | MAR 3, 2025

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Father-son feud rocks Singapore property giant

Cambodia deports 119 Thai nationals BANGKOK: Cambodia on Saturday said it deported 119 Thais across the two countries’ shared border, the latest handover in a regional crackdown on cyberscam centres. Cambodia’s Immigration Department said the Thais – 61 men and 58 women – had “snuck in to work and stayed illegally” in the kingdom. They were among 230 foreigners detained during raids in the border city of Poipet on Feb 22 and 23, it said. The Thais were deported via the Poipet checkpoint on Saturday. Cambodian authorities launched high profile raids on the compounds in late 2022. Saturday’s handover comes a day after Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra visited Sa Kaeo, the Thai town neighbouring Poipet, to “eliminate call centre gangs”, she said on X. Both Thai and Cambodian authorities said the workers had been paid to commit fraud online and worked voluntarily. A frontier town known for its casinos, Poipet has become a hub for cyberscam centres and online gambling operations. The repatriations come as Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia have ramped up efforts to curb a cyberscam industry worth billions of dollars a year, with the UN estimating as many as 120,000 people may be working in Myanmar scam centres. Many workers say they were lured or tricked into the scam centres by promises of high-paying jobs before they were effectively held hostage, their passports taken from them while they were forced to commit online fraud. – AFP 84 Indonesian workers sent home JAKARTA: Eighty-four Indonesians returned home overnight on two flights from Thailand, Indonesian officials said on Saturday, the latest group of alleged scam workers to be repatriated from the region. Cyberscam operations have thrived in Myanmar’s lawless border areas for several years. Under pressure from key ally China, Myanmar has cracked down on some of the compounds, freeing around 7,000 workers from more than two dozen countries. The 69 men and 15 women landed in Jakarta after negotiations between Indonesian officials and their Thai and Myanmar counterparts, said Foreign Affairs Ministry citizen protection director Judha Nugraha. “They will be brought to the Social Affairs Ministry’s safehouse and trauma centre and undergo rehabilitation,” he said. Ministry spokesperson Rolliansyah Soemirat confirmed their return. The group, which included three pregnant women, were in “good condition and healthy” after their evacuation from Myanmar, the ministry said in a statement. They arrived in Jakarta on two AirAsia flights – one late on Friday and the other early on Saturday. The ministry said it had repatriated 46 Indonesians in February, bringing the total repatriated since last month to 140. – AFP

o Justice always prevails, says 84-year-old patriarch

directors to “consolidate control of the board” and CDL, he said. To block the alleged power grab, Kwek Leng Beng filed a lawsuit and later announced he had secured a court order to halt the changes to the CDL Group’s board and management. Sherman Kwek, 49, denied the allegations, saying “there has been no attempt by us to oust the chairman”. The dispute has exposed a power struggle within CDL – Singapore’s largest real estate company by market capitalisation – and the Kwek family, whose empire is worth US$11.5 billion according to Forbes . In early February, Kwek Leng Beng had sought Sherman’s dismissal as CEO, saying his latest move came after “a long series of missteps”, citing a massive US$1.4 billion loss in a 2020 “debacle”, and poor investment decisions in the UK. CDL’s share price has also “consistently underperformed peers since (Sherman) assumed leadership in 2018”, the patriarch said. “(Young) people may make business mistakes in their careers and that is understandable, but circumventing corporate

governance laws is a red line,” Kwek Leng Beng said. “As a father, firing my son was certainly not an easy decision,” he said. CDL started as a loss-making business when Kwek Leng Beng, his father Kwek Hong Ping and his brother Kwek Leng Joo bought it in 1971. Under Kwek Leng Beng, it saw a massive expansion, with its portfolio spanning residences, offices, hotels, retail malls and integrated developments in Singapore, as well as China, Japan, the United States and across Europe. The elder Kwek said preserving his legacy was among the reasons why he was fighting his son and his boardroom allies. Sherman Kwek said the majority directors will “continue to uphold corporate governance and accountability”. His father asserted that “stripping away any meaningful authority of the executive chairman is a coup”. “It is now a matter before the court and I will let the court decide. Justice always prevails,” Kwek Leng Beng said. – AFP

SINGAPORE: A high-stakes father-and-son feud has plunged property giant City Developments Ltd (CDL) into turmoil. The battle of words between CDL’s executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng and his son Sherman Kwek has exposed deep rifts within the Forbes-ranked fourth-richest family in Singapore. The first public sign of trouble came on Wednesday, when CDL, a component of Singapore Exchange’s benchmark Straits Times Index – abruptly called for a trading halt, followed by a statement cancelling its scheduled financial year 2024 results briefing. Then came the bombshell: The 84-year-old patriarch publicly accused his son and CDL’s chief executive of orchestrating an “attempted coup at the board level”. The younger Kwek, along with the majority of the board, had appointed two additional

Rescue efforts enter third day at India avalanche site DEHRADUN: Rescuers hurried in sub-zero temperatures yesterday to dig out four missing workers presumed buried by an avalanche in a remote border area, with snowfall increasing the risk of more sliding snow.

More than 50 workers were submerged by snow and debris after the avalanche hit a construction camp on Friday near the border with Tibet in the northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. Relief teams have managed to rescue 50 workers, but among them four later died of their injuries. State authorities late on Saturday revised down the number of people missing after the avalanche from five to four after one worker, previously believed to be buried, was found to have safely made his way home. Officials did not provide details or say whether the man had been buried in the avalanche on Friday. The state disaster relief team said that all steel containers that the workers were staying in at the time of the avalanche had been found but there were no people inside. Rescuers have employed military helicopters, drones and sniffer dogs in their efforts, and soldiers were set to use ground-penetrating radar to help find the four workers believed to be missing. State Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had directed officials to move other workers from high-risk areas to safer locations due to continuous snowfall, the Times of India newspaper reported yesterday. At an altitude of more than 3,200m, minimum temperatures at the area where the avalanche hit were down to minus 12° Celsius. Avalanches and landslides are common in the

Rescuers rush to find workers trapped under an avalanche near Mana village on Friday. – AFPPIC

In 2021, nearly 100 people died in Uttarakhand after a huge glacier chunk fell into a river, triggering flash floods. And devastating monsoon floods and landslides in 2013 killed 6,000 people and led to calls for a review of development projects. – AFP

upper reaches of the Himalayas, especially during the winter season. The increased pace of development in the fragile Himalayan regions has heightened fears about the fallout from deforestation and construction.

Sri Lanka hunts police chief over deadly raid COLOMBO: Sri Lankan police were searching for their chief yesterday after a court order for his arrest was issued over the killing of an officer during a botched raid, an official said. “We went to his home to carry out the arrest warrant but he had gone into hiding, leaving behind his bodyguards,” said a senior officer. He said the court had also imposed a foreign travel ban on Tennakoon, 53, to stop him from leaving the island.

completion of a hearing. He was given the top job despite the highest court finding in a separate case that he had tortured a suspect in custody by rubbing menthol balm on his genitals. The court had ordered Tennakoon to pay US$1,600 (RM7,140) to the victim but the government at the time ignored judicial orders to take disciplinary action against him. – AFP

Local police, unaware of the undercover operation, confronted the unit from the capital, sparking a gun battle in which one officer was killed and another critically wounded. No drugs were found at the hotel. Tennakoon was controversially named as police chief in November 2023 but his appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court, which suspended him in July pending the

Inspector-General of Police Deshabandu Tennakoon has been missing since a magistrate in the island’s south ordered his arrest on Friday, following allegations that he had ordered the raid on Dec 31, 2023.

Tennakoon ordered a unit from Colombo to search a hotel in Weligama, a resort town about 150km south of the capital, for illegal drugs.