Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia Bhd has filed a defamation suit against blogger Wee Choo Keong, for publishing “false and malicious” statements, which it alleged had damaged the budget airline’s reputation.

Wee, who runs http://weechookeong.com, was recently appointed chairman of Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board.

In a statement yesterday, AirAsia said it took offence at an article by Wee entitled “Why Liow & MAHB encouraged AirAsia to owe RM50 million PSC/Airport Tax?”, which was posted on April 20, 2015.

It added that Wee had failed to respond to the airline’s solicitor’s letter demanding a retraction and thus, it had served Wee its writ of summons.

“AirAsia has always operated our business professionally including in our dealings with the regulators. The many misleading and defamatory statements published by Mr Wee Choo Keong are intended to mislead the public and damage our reputation,” AirAsia regional head of legal Amir Faezal Zakaria said in the statement.

“AirAsia has filed a suit because our reputation has been damaged by this conduct in addition to our efforts to correct the disinformation published about AirAsia,” he added.

In the blog posting, Wee had quoted sources as confirming that AirAsia owed passenger service charge (PSC) of more than RM50 million to Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB).

The former member of parliament had also questioned why MAHB and Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai were “condoning and/or encouraging” AirAsia to chalk up such huge outstanding PSC when the airline was supposed to pay all the PSC collected from passengers departing from the airports.

On Wednesday, its low-cost, long haul affiliate, AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) had also asked the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) to take action against Hong Kong-based research firm GMT Research for making “various misleading statements and allegations” about AAX in recent weeks.

AAX said GMT Research had accused AAX, among others, of practising or allowing profit shifting between AirAsia and AAX by way of transfer pricing of the service fees and costs charged by AirAsia.

In a June 10 report, GMT Research had questioned the AirAsia group’s accounting, profit generation, cash flow issues, leverage and group structure, which had caused prices of shares in AirAsia and AAX to fall. AirAsia’s share price has declined 35.15% from RM2.02 since June 10, while AAX’s share price has declined 18.75% from 24 sen.

AAX shares closed 2.5% lower at 19.5 sen yesterday, with a market capitalisation of RM808.89 million and 32.94 million shares done. The stock was the ninth most actively traded counter on Bursa Malaysia.

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on July 10, 2015.

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