07 January 2022 : Group Lease requests Court to consider criminal charges against JTA, 2 others after won business rehabilitation case

Mr. Tatsuya Konoshita, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Group Lease Public Company Limited, revealed “back on 11 April 2018, GL filed criminal charges against JTA and 2 JTA Directors: Nobuyoshi Fujisawa and Shigeyoshi Asano (now former Director of JTA), for jointly submitting a petition for business rehabilitation against GL, which falsely claimed that GL falls under the requirements for business rehabilitation. This caused GL to incur reputational damage and lose credibility amongst investors, which negatively affected the value of the shares of the Company. Recently, on 22 December 2021, the Supreme Court of Thailand gave a favorable result to GL when it denied JTA’s application to review the rehabilitation case brought forward by JTA. There is no more appeal for JTA about this and it’s final. We are happy that we can move on and show that JTA’s claim that GL falls under the business rehabilitation state was groundless, and this will give more assurances to the Company’s investors and stakeholders on the Company’s status.”

Mr. Riki Ishigami, Chief Executive Officer of Group Lease Public Company Limited, stated, “while we are happy the Supreme Court ended this saga about GL being rehabilitated, JTA, Nobuyoshi Fujisawa and Shigeyoshi Asano committed criminal acts in our view based on Section 90/80 of the Bankruptcy Act, 1940.  They submitted a false rehabilitation claim to the Bankruptcy Court about GL. The case has been temporarily struck out pending the final judgment of the rehabilitation case. Therefore, on 30 December 2021, GL asked the Central Bankruptcy Court to resume the criminal case against them. The Court has set an appointment to consider the resume of the proceeding on 14 February 2022. Punishment for their crime if this case is successful could be up to THB 300,000 and/or up to 3 years of prison and we will seek justice for our shareholders by chasing JTA and their Directors individually to make them compensate for the loss they created for GL and our shareholders and also make them face the consequences of their actions in criminal cases. In Thailand, it is the Central Bankruptcy Court which hears criminal complaints regarding false rehabilitation claims. This is the same court which ruled in GL’s favor that GL does not fall under the requirements for business rehabilitation.  

Additionally, I want to add that GL still has an active civil claim against JTA for THB 9.13 billion due to damage they caused GL and GL’s shareholders and we are appealing a Court of Appeals decision which took away THB 685.5 million that the Court originally awarded GL due to JTA’s harmful bankruptcy court actions. In our Supreme Court Appeal for the THB 685.5 million, we will include the Supreme Court’s rejection of JTA’s business rehabilitation appeal.