ECOWISE Holdings' management is in a dispute that has led the company' s chief executive, Lee Thiam Seng, to change the locks of its server rooms.

 

In a June 22 filing, ecoWise said Mr Lee and a group of personnel from IT firm Stone Forest had on June 15 forcefully entered the " highly restricted" server room at the company' s Sungei Kadut office.

 

The forced entry happened because Mr Lee could not contact the company' s IT manager, the only one with access. Mr Lee then padlocked and secured the server room door.

 

He subsequently went with a locksmith to ecoWise' s main office at Commonwealth Lane and changed the locks of the main office to secure access to another of the company' s IT servers there.

 

 

According to the announcement, the appointment of Stone Forest was made by Mr Lee without the prior knowledge of the board or the company' s sponsor.

 

Mr Lee has claimed he engaged Stone Forest as there was an " urgent need to preserve the assets, evidence, books and records of the company in order for him to investigate various corporate governance and internal control issues of the group" .

 

As he had concerns about the continued management of the company, Mr Lee chose to exercise his authority as CEO and appoint a chief operating officer. He also placed certain executives and senior staff on " paid suspension of duties" .

 

Among those suspended is the company' s executive director and deputy CEO Cao Shixuan, who had confronted Mr Lee at the Sungei Kadut office and asked for proof that the Stone Forest personnel were allowed to be there.

 

Mr Lee had then asked Mr Cao to leave the company' s premises.

 

Mr Cao made a police report about the incident on June 16, and is disputing Mr Lee' s version of events.

 

Reporting to the board, Mr Cao said Mr Lee' s actions have affected the company' s operations, including its ability to pay other parties such as government agencies and suppliers from June 15-20.

 

Three of the suspended employees returned to work on June 21 and started to process the requisite payments.

 

Such inability to make payments during the affected period is likely to " significantly impact" ecoWise' s business, operations and relationships with various organisations and business partners, Mr Cao said.

 

Mr Cao also said the incident may lead to the compromise of confidential information, which may result in a leak and create security and data breaches. This in turn may affect the company' s credibility. Some examples of confidential data include finance, human resource and customer-related information related to ecoWise' s Singapore, China and Malaysia business partners.

 

As of Tuesday, only selected employees, and excluding the IT manager, have been given access to the company' s IT servers as the password was changed by the Stone Forest personnel.

 

The announcement comes after ecoWise suspended trading in its shares on Friday, saying its board was unable to come to an agreement in response to queries raised by Singapore Exchange Regulation on June 14.

 

The latest announcement was approved for release by Mr Cao and by Er Kwong Wah, the company' s lead independent director.

 

ecoWise said it is in the midst of evaluating the actual loss from the server room incident and will update shareholders in due course if there is any. It is also taking active and urgent steps to ensure the operations of the group continue as usual.