[SPECIAL REPORT] Lifting the corporate veil on MySejahtera’s intricate business web leading to Singapore

KUALA LUMPUR – It must have been a dream for Entomo Malaysia Sdn Bhd (formerly KPISoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd) to offer its services to develop a national contact tracing app in a short time amid the Covid-19 pandemic as part of its corporate social responsibility.

But, when questions were raised over the company’s shareholders and directors, the dream might have dissipated along with its corporate veil.

Publicly available documents have shown that Entomo Malaysia’s sole shareholder is Entomo Pte Ltd – a company incorporated in Singapore. And Entomo Pte Ltd’s largest shareholder is a Singaporean company called Dreamteam Incorporation Pte Ltd, which holds 53.1% of its 66.8 million total ordinary shares.

Entomo Pte Ltd has also issued 20.5 million preferred shares.

While Dreamteam Incorporation may be a Singaporean registered business, its directors Raveenderen Ramamoothie and Rekha Mani – who is also a director of Entomo Malaysia – are Malaysians.

In fact, half of Dreamteam Incorporation’s 16 shareholders are Malaysians. Raveenderen holds a majority shareholding of 71.2% of the 40.6 million total shares, followed by 3.9% held by one Anuar Rozhan. Other Malaysian shareholders include Gopinath Subramaniam, Ganesan Shanmugam, Rajasekaran Munisamy, Ragunath Murthy, Sarah Ann Silva and Jonathan David Ross Silva.

Some of these names will be a recurring feature as we dive deeper into the complicated corporate structure of MySejahtera licence holder MySJ Sdn Bhd, as Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin made clear that Putrajaya is only negotiating with this company over the app’s services subscription terms.

Khairy had said the deal to transfer the app’s intellectual property and software licence between its original developer Entomo Malaysia and MySJ is unrelated to the government’s latest negotiation.

On Friday, he downplayed concerns about foreign interests in Entomo Malaysia, saying that the majority shareholders in the company are Malaysians.

He also revealed to the Dewan Negara that the government had signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with the developers of the MySejahtera contact tracing app on April 1, 2020, to secure ownership of all user data, and that one of the main terms in the agreement was for the government to gain full ownership of data and information obtained from MySejahtera users.

According to documents obtained from the Registrar of Companies (SSM), MySJ’s shares are split four ways – between three private limited companies and one individual.

The companies are Hasrat Budi Sdn Bhd, Revolusi Asia Sdn Bhd and P2 Management – each with their own intricate corporate structures.

Hasrat Budi owns 10.05% of shares with MySJ

A closer look into Hasrat Budi reveals it is a relatively new company incorporated last August with no financial information filed just yet.

The only shareholder of Hasrat Budi is Eco World Development Group Bhd, which lists Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin as executive chairman and Datuk Heah Kok Boon as a former executive director, having resigned from his post on Friday.

In an exchange filing, the group said Heah has now been appointed as the alternate director to Liew and is set to continue his role as chief financial officer.

Both Liew and Heah are also directors for Hasrat Budi and MySJ.

Revolusi Asia-Entomo Malaysia: different, yet similar

Revolusi Asia and Entomo Malaysia are two separate entities but a look at their corporate structures show that several names are repeated throughout both companies.

To understand how Entomo Malaysia and Revolusi Asia are tied to MySJ, let’s look at the ownership structure.

According to documents, Entomo Malaysia has two directors, Malaysians Rekha and Yogaraj Thuraisingam.

However, the company’s shares are wholly owned by Entomo Pte Ltd, of which Malaysian Raveenderen is its CEO.

Following reports in 2020, Raveenderen along with Anuar Rozhan, brother of former Astro CEO Datuk Rohana Rozhan, developed the MySejahtera application when they were executives with KPISoft Malaysia, which was later renamed to Entomo Malaysia.

Entomo Malaysia’s software was chosen over 10 others to be the national contact tracing software and MySejahtera was ready for use in April 2020.

Meanwhile, other directors include Naveen Pralhad Deshpande from India, and Singaporeans Finian Tan and Tan Seng Hong.

Now, looking at Revolusia Asia, which owns the largest share in MySJ at 81.4%, key individuals from Entomo Pte Ltd and Dreamteam Incorporation are also present in both Revolusi Asia and MySJ’s corporate structures.

Raveenderen and Naveen (an Indian national with shares in Dreamteam) are listed as both shareholders and directors in Revolusi Asia, while Anuar is listed as a shareholder.

Besides that, Revolusi Asia features other high-profile personalities as company directors, including former Sapura Energy CEO Tan Sri Shahril Shamsuddin.

Anuar, Raveenderen and Shahril all sit as directors in MySJ, while Ganesan Shanmugam is the fourth and only non-corporate shareholder.

Sime Darby Plantation chairman and Bersatu disciplinary council chairman Tan Sri Megat Najmuddin Megat Khas is also on Revolusi Asia’s board of directors.

MySJ embroiled in litigation with shareholder

Despite having a 7% stake in MySJ, P2 Assets Management dragged the company to court in 2020.

P2 Assets Management named Entomo Malaysia, Revolusi Asia and MySJ as defendants.

Based on a statement of claim filed in April 2020, P2 Asset Management claims that Revolusi Asia entered an agreement with Entomo Malaysia, where Revolusi Asia holds all shares in MySJ as Entomo Malaysia’s nominee.

P2 Asset Management alleged that it was not informed of the arrangement.

MySJ allegedly entered into an agreement with Entomo Malaysia six months later for the transfer of MySejahtera’s intellectual property to MySJ for a sum of RM338.6 million.

Towards the end of 2020, P2 Asset Management said Entomo Malaysia proposed that Putrajaya enter into a public-private partnership or a service contract with MySJ to continue using the MySejahtera application.

On December 31, 2020, Revolusi Asia entered into a share sale agreement with P2 Asset Management, where the former would sell its MySJ shares in the event the latter facilitates a letter of award from Putrajaya to MySJ for a public-private partnership or the service contract commercial model.

Now, P2 Asset Management claimed that Entomo and Revolusi Asia have breached the share sale agreement and is suing Revolusi Asia to take steps and transfer an additional 10% of shares to the plaintiff. – The Vibes, April 3, 2022

Additional reporting by Qistina Nadia Dzulqarnain