PUTRAJAYA: Due diligence and conditions including a complete restructuring of Sapura Energy Bhd's top management were conducted before the RM1.1bil capital injection into the company, says Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Anwar - who is also the Finance Minister - said the new capital injection provided by the government, amounting to RM1.1bil, was specifically for the payment of SEB's debts to vendors.
This involves 2,000 local oil and gas SMEs, the majority of which are Bumiputra companies.
"It's not a bailout and not about saving a big company with its top management. The chairman and senior management must all go," he said in his address at the Finance Ministry's monthly assembly on Thursday (March 13).
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Anwar said that SEB should not be allowed to go bankrupt as it has the capabilities to handle downstream oil and gas operations.
He criticised those blaming him for helping the vendors.
"We did not give the RM1.1bil to the company; it was specifically for the vendors who had worked for eight years. From a total of 2,000, 80% of them are Bumiputra vendors. Should they be punished? If I don't help them, they will say Anwar is a traitor, he never champions the plight of the Bumiputra, he is just a DAP mouthpiece. If I do help them, they will say we (the government) are helping the company," said Anwar.
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Meanwhile, in a separate statement, Anwar said that the capital injection is part of SEB's restructuring efforts and is aimed at helping and saving local workers who have not been paid for their services for a long time.
"It is also crucial for saving the local oil and gas industry ecosystem. It is important to emphasise that this capital injection does not in any way benefit SEB's shareholders or management. In SEB's restructuring, the previous major shareholders are no longer involved in the management of SEB. A new professional management has been appointed to carry out SEB's restructuring," noted Anwar.
Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), the existing significant shareholder of Sapura Energy, said on Wednesday (March 12) that the funds invested would be exclusively and directly used to repay the oil and gas firm’s local vendors. It said this was crucial to ensure the financial survival of Malaysian service providers within the O&G ecosystem, pointing out that Sapura Energy had more than 2,000 vendors. Many of these vendors were small and medium-sized enterprises and made up about 59,000 workers in the O&G sector, it added.
