KARAMBUNAI CORP BHD [], whose share price has rallied over the past three days, on a news portal report about an integrated resort in Sabah, said it had not submitted any official proposal to the government.
“Karambunai has not up to date submitted any official proposal to the Malaysian government, nor has it penned any written documents with any other third parties in respect of any plan to build a casino in Karambunai,” it said in response to a query from Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd on Friday, Sept 24.
Its share price had surged from 5.5 sen on Wednesday, Sept 22 since a news portal reported about a possible integrated resort in Sabah, to close at 18 sen on Friday. Over the past three days, the share price is up 227% or 12.5 sen.
It closed six sen higher at 18 sen on Friday with 392 million shares, accounting for about 22% of the total trading volume on Bursa Malaysia.
Karambunai is linked to NagaCorp Ltd which is listed in Hong Kong and operates a casino in Cambodia. Their common shareholder is Tan Sri Dr Chen Lip Keong, who founded NagaCorp Ltd. and serves as its chief executive officer. Chen is president of Karambunai Corp.
However, analysts had said they were skeptical about the proposed integrated resort project in Sabah.
Malaysian Insider said on Wednesday that Malaysia appeared to have jumped on the integrated resort (IR) bandwagon with the unveiling today of a proposed 500-acre “eco-nature” resort in Sabah by the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) at the Economic Transformation Plan (ETP) open day here.
Karambunai said on Friday that since it is a key player of tourism in Sabah, its general manager of the Nexus Karambunai Hotel had been officially invited as a member of the Pemandu-driven New Key Economic Areas tourism lab.
The discussions, which included other members of the private and public sector, were to assist in governmental efforts to identify high-growth tourism potential to propel the country towards achieving Vision 2020.
“During the lab sessions, Karambunai’s representative has been discussing and disclosing drawings in Karambunai with members of the private & public sectors as to the manner in which Karambunai as a member of private sector may assist in this direction,” it said.
The company also said Pemandu was free to use any drawings conducted in the lab sessions, but chooses drawings from Karambunai which has copyrights source and status.
“To Karambunai, these chosen drawings are merely meant as a plan. However, Karambunai is honoured that Pemandu uses these plans discussed in the tourism lab and disclosed to demonstrate as a tourism initiative to assist Pemandu attaining national objective. The recent public information simply mentions the existence of an integrated resort in Kota Kinabalu Sabah and has not disclosed and named specifically Karambunai as a party,” it said.
The company also said, up to date, it had not received any official communication from any governmental source.
Written by Joseph Chin
The Edge Malaysia
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