[ad_1]
SINGAPORE – The 170 members of The Pines club who are suing auto mogul Peter Kwee and his company Exklusiv Resorts for relocating and downsizing the club have accused him of presenting incomplete evidence of a dialogue held in 2012.
During the session, they said that Mr. Kwee gave them the impression that the club would remain at his address 30 Stevens Road. But some of The Pines’ amenities were later relocated to a shared site in Tanah Merah.
His indictment was made on Monday (November 30) when Mr. Kwee took the stand for the first time in the ongoing Superior Court case, in which club members seek damages of more than $ 110,000 each.
Exklusiv Resorts is the owner of the club and Mr. Kwee is the director of Exklusiv.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Mr. Lau Kah Hee of BC Lim & Lau, referred to the slides that Mr. Kwee presented and claimed to have been presented at the meeting. Images shown of the planned remodel were captioned “The Pines at 30 Stevens Road.”
“If you look at all these slides, there is nothing about the relocation of the club or the clubhouse … In fact, they show it at 30 Stevens Road,” said Mr. Lau.
He also said that his clients told him that the slides were not the ones shown in the dialogue and that the minutes of the dialogue presented as documents for trial by Mr. Kwee were “incomplete”.
The slides and minutes were not sent to members after the dialogue, Lau added.
Mr. Kwee replied that, to his understanding, those were the slides that were shown at the meeting and that the plans at that time were in the preliminary stage. “We had no intention, at the time, to move the club,” he added.
Members accuse Mr. Kwee of violating contractual agreements, misleading them into thinking that the facility would remain on Stevens Road and have not informed them of the proposed redevelopment.
The club was closed for renovation in 2013, and the Stevens Road facility was sold to property developer Oxley Gem. The members accuse Mr. Kwee of not informing them about the sale.
Mr. Kwee responded that the sale was “public knowledge”, as reported in the media. Therefore, he did not write to inform members, he added.
The Supreme Court Justice Chua Lee Ming asked him if it was his practice not to report directly to the club members, but to rely on them to read the newspapers. Mr. Kwee admitted it was an “oversight”.
On relocating the club, Lau asked Kwee why she did not inform members about the “inevitable relocation of the clubhouse” when it became clear in 2015 that she had to be relocated. Kwee said at the time that he “tried to find a second solution” and did not think to tell the members.
Members have been allowed to use the facilities of the Laguna National Golf and Country Club and the Dusit Thani Laguna Singapore complex in Tanah Merah.
Kwee’s attorneys, Vikram Nair and Foo Xian Fong of Rajah & Tann, had previously noted in court documents that The Pines had secured the lease of a smaller clubhouse at 30 Stevens Road set to open early next year.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
[ad_2]
