AWARD

Introduction

The dispute is over the claimant's dismissal by the company on 26 March 1992.Vide letter of 31 October 1992 the Minister of Human Resources referred the matter to the to the Industrial Court under Industrial Relations Act 1967, s. 20(3) .

The brief facts are these:

The claimant commenced employment with the company effective 15 December 1976 in Kerteh. His last position was as accounting clerk (Grade 11) in the material accounting group (hereinafter referred to as "MAG") where his job function was to update inter-company invoices from overseas known as "booking" as it appears in the computer which is updated by Kemaman Supply Base. At the material time, besides the claimant, Anuar Buang, Maimunah A. Kutty (CLW1), Ahmad Jefry Ghani, Hashim Razaly and Mohd. Remy Yusof were the other staff in MAG.

In December 1991, the company received a letter dated 4 December 1991 from one of its vendors, Innogran Ingram Cactus Sdn Bhd (hereinafter referred to as "IIC") alleging serious irregularities in the company's processing and payment of invoices (p. 15 of Bundle 'B' ). According to the letter signed by the executive director, a person by the name of "Alphonso" was facilitating early payment of invoices in return for a commission of 1.5% of the invoice value and that the IIC felt very strongly about such corrupt and unsavoury situations. The letter also mentioned the telephone number of Alphonso as (09)-5454563.

As a consequence the company embarked on an investigation into this matter. The investigation was entrusted to its security manager, Quah Chin Tat (COW3).

COW3, in collaboration with Soo Chu Min (COW1), the former accounting manager and Cuthbert Whalley, the general manager of IIC arranged for a meeting with "Alphonso" at a hotel room in Holiday Villa on 27 December 1991. A surveillance camera and a microphone was mounted to record the entire meeting. COW3 produced CO3 (the video tape) and CO6 (a transcript of the conversation during the meeting). Upon review of the videotape "Alphonso" was identified as Anuar Buang. However the Claimant did not appear in the said video.

Meanwhile at around the same period, precisely on 4 December 1991 the Claimant received an e-mail from Anuar Buang (p. 10 of Bundle 'B' ) which accused him, among other things, of demanding money for processing invoices from vendors and being greedy and selfish with commissions that he had apparently received. Sometime later on 1 January 1992 the claimant brought this to the attention of his superior, one David Dzulkifli Abdullah who contacted COW3 to inform him of this e-mail. Arrangements were then made for COW3 to go to Kerteh. Subsequently on arriving there on 7 January 1992 COW3 proceeded to interview the claimant as well as the five other staff of MAG.

During the interview there were three persons besides COW3 and they were David Dzulkifli Abdullah, Mohd Ali Omar and Bakar Webb, a security officer, but they were not called to give evidence at this hearing. The claimant was questioned for four hours without any break except to pick up his children from school. The information supplied by the claimant was recorded by COW3 in writing (pp. 150 to 161 of Bundle 'B' ) but he did not ask the claimant to sign these notes. COW3 also recorded his interviews with the five other staff of MAG. These notes appear in Bundle 'B' as follows:

(i) Anuar Buang (pages 203 213)

(ii) Maimunah Ahmad (pages 228 229)

(iii) Ahmad Jefry (pages 220 221)

(iv) Hashim Razali (pages 214 219)

(v) Mohd. Remy (pages 224 224)

Vide its letter dated 9 January 1992 the company suspended the Claimant and preferred several charges against him and the five others. But by a letter of 19 January 1992 (p. 141 of Bundle 'B' ) the company furnished reamended charges which was received by the claimant on 20 January 1992. The charges read as follows:

(i) That you solicited or attempted to solicit money from the company's contractor