JEPAK Holdings Sdn Bhd, the company at the centre of Rosmah Mansor’s corruption trial, is facing a winding-up petition over a RM6 million debt.

Miri-based company BHJ Enterprise Sdn Bhd had, on January 17, filed a winding-up petition against Jepak to recover the amount.

The legal firm acting for BHJ, Messers Chan Khoon Moh Advocates, said the debt is over non-payment on a two-year diesel supply contract valued at RM5 million plus interests and other costs.

The contract, from 2017 to 2019, was to supply Bintulu-based Jepak with diesel needed to fulfil a contract with the Education Ministry to supply fuel to generator sets in off-grid schools in Sarawak.

Miri high court judge Dean Wayne Daly is to hear the winding-up petition on April 13.

BHJ’s petition seeks to have the company wound up by the court under the Companies Act 2016 and that the Official Receiver Malaysia be appointed as provisional liquidator of the company.

Former prime minister Najib Razak, Rosmah’s husband, is said to have awarded Jepak a RM1.25 billion project to install a solar hybrid energy facility to power some 369 Sarawak schools in the interior.

He did this in his capacity as finance minister and, according to a witness in Rosmah’s ongoing trial, had approved a letter by then education minister Mahdzir Khalid requesting a special exemption in the  procurement process.

Rosmah is facing charges linked to the solicitation of RM187.5 million from Jepak to secure the contract.

She reportedly received RM6.5 million cash in bribes.

Jepak managing director Abang Saidi Abang Samsudin had, in a statement in July 2018, disclosed the company had 12 diesel suppliers and subcontractors.

That same month, the Education Ministry was in the midst of terminating a fuel supply contract with Jepak over alleged non-performance.

Saidi in turn blamed it on a delay in payments from the ministry.

In the statement appealing against the proposed termination, Saidi said the fuel was bought in cash and the “almost eight months” delay in payment had disrupted efforts to supply diesel and maintenance work for the schools’ generator sets.

Jepak began as a car rental company in the Bintulu boom years of the 1970s and 1980s. The company’s website, last updated on November 15, 2018, lists the company’s present main activities as “architectural, engineering, and related services”. – March 10, 2020.