PETALING JAYA: Berjaya Corporation has no interest in SEA Gamer Mall.
The corporation's founder Tan Sri Vincent Tan said this after the spotlight was thrown on the Perak-based company as authorities moved to extradite two of its executives for cybercrime and money laundering.
"I wish to clarify that the Berjaya Corporation Berhad Group of Companies has no interest whatsoever in SEAGM.
"My shareholding in SEAGM is entirely my personal investment, which I may choose to divest when the time is right," Tan said in a media statement.
This follows reports linking the Berjaya tycoon and his daughters to SEA Gamer Mall.
Tan said Nerine and Chryseis were non-executive directors, who were no longer part of the company.
"At all times, my daughters had no involvement whatsoever in the running of the company. They were just my nominees on the board of SEAGM.
"Both Nerine and Chryseis had, in fact, already resigned before this incident," Tan added.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) charged two Malaysians with 23 counts of racketeering, conspiracy, identity theft, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, money laundering, violations of the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) and falsely registering domain names.
They were alleged to have been involved with five other Chinese nationals, who were part of a hacking group known as APT41.
SEA Gamer Mall chief executive officer Wong Ong Hua, 46, and its chief product officer Ling Yang Ching, 32 were named in their statement.
The charges allege that Wong and Ling conducted the affairs of SEA Gamer Mall through a pattern of racketeering activities involving computer intrusion offences that targeted the (video) gaming industry in the United States, France, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
Tan had also claimed that SEA Gamer Mall nor the two executives possessed the expertise or tools necessary for computer intrusions and hacking.
"The two SEAGM executives maintain their innocence and have appointed Malaysian legal counsel to represent them," he said.
Tan, who has been a passive investor of SEA Gamer Mall for the past 13 years, added that the management of the company had stepped up security measures to protect all customers' personal data.
"I have been assured by the management that SEAGM will extend their full cooperation to the authorities and will continue with their mission to offer the safest and most secure services to all their millions of customers around the world," he said.
SEA Gamer Mall was established in 2007 with offices in China, Thailand and Indonesia.
On its website, the company claimed that it has 1.9 million registered users and, in a 2017 news report, Wong was quoted as saying that most of the website's sales came from prepaid top-up cards and online game virtual items.
The company had reportedly raked in RM386 million in revenue in 2019 and was projected to hit RM500 million this year as the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a surge in people playing games and purchasing in-game items.