KUALA LUMPUR (June 22): Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd (FGV) has agreed to give its suspended group president and chief executive officer (CEO) Datuk Zakaria Arshad another three days until noon tomorrow to reply to the show-cause letter issued by the FGV board of directors last Tuesday.

The board had served show-cause letters on Zakaria and its group chief financial officer Ahmad Tifli Mohd Talha in relation to the long outstanding debt of Safitex Trading LLC with FGV's subsidiary Delima Oil Products Sdn Bhd and they were originally given till June 20 to reply. Failure to do so would result in the duo losing their position in the plantation giant.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia today, FGV said its decision came after considering Zakaria's request to shift the deadline to reply the letter from 4.30pm on June 20 to July 30.

"The board had agreed to grant him until 12 noon on Friday, June 23, 2017 to submit an explanation to the show cause letter," it added.

Meanwhile, FGV said Ahmad Tifli had replied to the show-cause letter on June 20 "as required".

It added that both Zakaria and Ahmad Tifli will continue to be on leave of absence until further notice from the board.

The duo, along with two other senior management executives, have been suspended from their duties since June 6 amid an internal audit investigation into alleged irregularities in business dealings between Safitex and Delima Oil.

This follows Zakaria's refusal to a request by former FGV non-executive chairman Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad to resign amid allegations of improprieties in the group.

Zakaria has since claimed there exist corruption and abuse of power in FGV, which triggered an investigation by Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on over 60 FGV officers, including Mohd Isa and his wife, who does not hold any position in the group.

In the absence of the four executives, FGV had formed a board executive committee comprising two FGV directors, Datuk Dr Omar Salim and Datuk Mohd Zafer Mohd Hashim, as well as head of logistics cluster Azman Ahmad to take over the responsibility of performing the functions of the group president and CEO. FGV's plantation sector group financial controller Aznur Kama Azmir is also serving as interim CFO.

FGV shares closed up four sen or 2.34% at RM1.75 today, giving it a market capitalisation of RM6.28 billion.