KUALA LUMPUR: MyEG Services Bhd and Datasonic Group Bhd
saw a steep selloff in late-morning trade on news that the companies had been implicated in graft charges against former deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
As the news broke, both counters hit their lower daily limits before retracing some losses. At midday break, MyEG was trading 37 sen or 25% lower at RM1.13 a share on the back of 169.89 million units traded.
Datasonic skidded 25.5 sen or 37% to 44 sen a share on turnover of 58.89 million units.
Short-selling in both counters were suspended after triggering the stock exchange's circuit breakers.
According to news portal Malaysiakini, the two companies were named in two separate cases in which the UMNO president was said to have received payments for facilitating the award of projects.
Zahid was alleged to have received a total of RM13.25mil for helping a consulting company secure a MyEG project.
He was also accused of receiving a total of RM6mil from Datasonic managing director Chew Ben Ben. Datasonic has been a recipient of government contracts for the supply of passport chips and polycarbonate biodata pages.
In a statement issued at midday break, Datasonic refuted the claims that it had issued any payment to Zahid in relation to the supply of 12.5 million chips for the Malaysian passport.
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