Kiwlegedera not needed in court; 10 Touchwood Directors identified in new submission
The Colombo Commercial High Court has decided that the presence in court of former Touchwood Investments Chairman/CEO Lanka Kiwlegedera was not required while the petitioner in the winding up case has submitted a motion summoning all other directors of the company to be held liable.
The Touchwood winding up case lawyer for the petitioner Avindra Rodrigo submitted a motion on Thursday (September 18) to summon 10 other directors to appear in the case in a bid to hold them liable for the company.
The directors identified in the motion are Roscoe and Swarna Maloney, Laksaman Kulathunga, Prageeth Bandara Herath, Janath Sohitha Olaboduwa, Aloysius Ralph Perera, Rienzie T. Wijetilleke, Charles Jeffrey Ebert, Hussain Buhary and Indrajith Upul Peiris.The case was taken up for hearing on Friday where the liquidator for Touchwood Investments Sudath Kumar submitted both the preliminary and progress reports detailing the assets of the company.
Lawyers appearing for the liquidator, Sudath Hettiarachchi and Hafeel Farisz filed the comprehensive report stating that the entire list of assets were obtained by them from the claimants and they were still in the process of identifying the lands.
Court had asked if Mr. Kiwlegedera had provided any information on the availability of the assets to which the liquidator’s lawyers had replied in the negative.
Nihal Fernando PC appearing for Mr. Kiwlegedera had stated that since the latter was appointed a director in September 2013 and did not have any more information, his presence was not necessary and this was agreed upon by court. Mr. Fernando had said that they would however, be assisting in locating the assets in Thailand.
Meanwhile, during the hearing V.K. Choksy appearing for P.N. Pestongee of Abans Group and M. Kandasamy of Oxonia Institute reserved the right to consider the liquidator’s report submitted to court and support his application made previously to change the liquidator.
Mr. Choksy is expected to obtain a copy of the liquidator’s report shortly and would within two weeks decide on whether to change the liquidator or not, through a court order.
Currently, the liquidator is in the process of identifying the lands and the next hearing of the case was set for December 4.