By K.C. Vijayan, Law Correspondent

LAGUNA National Golf and Country Club owner Peter Kwee has been ordered by the High Court to pay about $1 million to two firms for debts he owes them.

LN Golf Holding and the JTC Corporation-linked SLI Holdings won their suits against Mr Kwee in a spat which had its beginnings in a $10 million sale of shares in the golf club to him in August 2001.

The club, located in Tampines, has more than 3,000 members holding memberships worth at least $160,000 each.

Mr Kwee, 62, a car and property tycoon, bought the club in 2001 by taking over a total of $10 million in debt owed by the club in differing amounts to five shareholders - NSL Resorts International, CapitaLand Marketing & Property Services, SLI Holdings, LN Golf Holding and Taiyo. Their stakes ranged from 1.99 million to 2.49 million shares.

Mr Kwee agreed to repay the debts when he signed the deal in August 2001, but when he defaulted on payments, he was taken to the High Court by his creditors.

Six years later, they consented to drop their suits after he agreed to pay some $8.8 million in instalments of varying amounts to them.

But three of Mr Kwee's creditors went to court again after he withheld the last two instalments and claimed that he was entitled to do so to offset the tax liabilities faced by Laguna before he took over in 2001. According to court documents, he claimed he had been misled, and such a cost would have affected the value of his shares.

The pact on the debt repayment was not enforceable, he argued.

Mr Kwee, who was defended by lawyers Sim Bock Eng and Lee Ee Yang from WongPartnership, held back the last two payments for October and December last year, worth about $3.07 million, to cover the cost of any tax he had to pay.

It is understood that the tax issue is still being resolved.

Mr Kwee claimed there was an implicit understanding between the parties that he would be entitled to delay payout to provide for the potential tax bill.

But the plaintiffs' lawyers Edward Tiong and Eunice Chew, from Allen & Gledhill, refuted the claims and among other things, pointed to the terms of the settlement pact that had been carefully thought through by both sides.

At a closed-door hearing on Monday, Assistant Registrar Denise Wong struck out Mr Kwee's counterclaim of misrepresentation. She ordered him to pay $313,548 to SLI and $627,093 to LN Golf.

Ms Sim yesterday said Mr Kwee is considering an appeal.

A third suit by NSL Resorts International, involving $1.56 million, is pending in the High Court.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.