Abdul Aziz Mohamad JCA:

[1] The appellant company, having been refused by the High Court at Shah Alam on 2 December 2002, applied to this Court for a stay of execution, pending appeal, of an order given on 7 January 2002 by that High Court for the sale under s 256 of the National Land Code of three lots of land belonging to them that they had charged to the respondent company as security for loans provided by the respondent company to them. The appeal that is pending is the appellant company's appeal to this Court from the order of sale of 7 January 2002.

[2] It was noted that according to the title to the notice of motion by which the application for stay of execution was made to this Court, the application was made under s 44 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964. That section confers general powers on a single judge of this Court to make, in any proceedings pending before this Court, incidental directions and interim orders and orders concerning security for costs. In the submissions before us on the stay application, there was some argument as to whether the appropriate section should be s 44 or s 73, which is specifically about stay of execution pending appeal to this Court. The argument involved references to the observations of this Court about s 44 in See Teow Guan & Ors v. Kian Joo Holdings Sdn Bhd & Ors, [1995] 3 MLJ 598 and had, as its ultimate focus, the question of what an applicant for a stay of execution has to show. But judging the appellants' stay application by the manner in which they sought to justify it in their affidavit, as will be seen after this, to my mind it would not have made any difference to its outcome whether it was an application under ss 44 or 73.

[3] The statutory sale by public auction had been fixed for 19 February 2003. We heard the stay application on 18 February 2003 and on the same day we dismissed it. These are my grounds for deciding that the application ought to be dismissed.

[4] A few salient facts need first to be set out.

[5] The loans were disbursed in 1995. The total sum disbursed was RM25,800,000. Because the appellants defaulted in the payment of accrued interest amounting to RM3,512,265.79 as at 31 January 1997, in October 1997 the respondents declared that the principal, interest and all other sums payable under the loan agreement were forthwith due and payable. On 1 February 2003, seventeen days before we dismissed the appellants' stay application, the outstanding amount that they owed the respondents was RM71,440,223.50. That amount would keep increasing with the accrual of interest from day to day by an amount of more than RM20,000 a day.

[6] According to a valuation report obtained by the respondents, the three lands that the respondents held as security, which are located in the vicinity of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre, had a market value of RM27,680,000 as at 15 February 2002. That value was adopted by the appellants' counsel in submission.