On the evening of September 6, Jinzhou Port Co., Ltd. (ST Jin Port) brought a total of 12 companies to court to recover a total of 770 million yuan in debts.
ST Jin Port listed Beijing Zhongheng Haoyu Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai Jianengde Energy (Group) Co., Ltd., and 10 other companies as defendants in the “Announcement on Major Litigation of Jinzhou Port Co., Ltd.”
The announcement stated that the specific disputes between ST Jin Port and the 12 defendants were essentially the same. It involved situations where ST Jin Port fulfilled its contractual obligations first, such as making payment for goods, but the other party failed to deliver the goods within the agreed period, or ST Jin Port delivered goods first but the other party did not pay the full amount within the payment period.
ST Jin Port has requested the court to order the defendants to pay for the goods or refund the advance payments, with a total amount of approximately 770 million yuan. The case has been accepted by the court but has not yet gone to trial. To prevent the defendants from transferring assets and making it difficult to enforce future judgments, ST Jin Port has applied for property preservation measures in court. Currently, the court has frozen a total of 3.92 million yuan in the defendants’ bank accounts.
ST Jin Port stated that the outcome of the above litigation could have an uncertain impact on the company’s current or future profits.
This year, ST Jin Port did not disclose its semi-annual report within the legal deadline. On the evening of August 30, ST Jin Port announced that the semi-annual report had not been approved by the board’s audit committee because despite the company’s efforts to rectify issues following the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s “Notice of Administrative Penalties and Advance Notice of Market Entry Ban,” it was not completely resolved and hence could not accurately reflect the company’s true operating situation.
In May this year, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the “Notice of Administrative Penalties and Advance Notice of Market Entry Ban” to ST Jin Port. During its investigation, the commission found that Jinzhou Port had engaged in bulk trading with seven companies to inflate revenue and profit and meet the requirements for bank loans, without actual commercial substance. Additionally, from 2018 to 2021, Jinzhou Port and these companies falsely increased business revenue, operating costs, and total profits, leading to false entries in the annual reports from 2018 to 2021.
According to public records, Jinzhou Port Co., Ltd. is mainly engaged in comprehensive port transportation services, including loading and unloading, transportation, and warehousing of goods such as petroleum products, food, containers, and coal.