May 4, 2010
Sued for e-mail defamation
<!-- by line --> By Elena Chong
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A SENIOR executive of Tan Chong and Sons Motor has taken the president of Volvo (China) Investment to court over an e-mail message. Mr Goh Leng Kwang, 59, said the letter attached to the e-mail message sent on Nov 5, 2007 to the chairman of the Tan Chong Group, Mr Tan Eng Soon, and copied to several others including two other defendants, contained words which were defamatory of him. Among other things, Mr Goh claimed that the words questioned his integrity and stated that he had not acted in the best interests of his employers or the shareholders, could not be trusted, and was an emotional and irrational person.
But defendants Mr Joachim Rosenberg, AB Volvo and its subsidiary, Nissan Diesel Motor, which is based in Japan, are denying that the letter is defamatory. The defendants' case is that Mr Goh's lawsuit is an attempt to fish for information to support Tan Chong's ongoing dispute with Volvo in relation to their business dealings in Thailand. It is their position that Mr Rosenberg sent the letter to Mr Tan purely to push the Thailand negotiations forward, as they had reached an impasse at that time.
Read the full report in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times.
