There were five senior counsels, including two representing former remisier king and billionaire investor Peter Lim.

In all, there were 25 lawyers, representing the seven parties in the lawsuit before High Court Judge Chan Seng Onn. They made up most of the mega court's attendees yesterday.

The spacious public gallery, with about 240 seats, was mostly empty.

Interest in the issues surrounding the club seems to have waned since March 2001, when the courtroom in the old Supreme Court building was sometimes packed with RTC staff and members.

Perhaps nothing about the club's affairs can surprise them any more, following the shocking revelation that the club accepted almost 19,000 members.

Or that it paid its then-chief financial officer Chan Lay Hoon $1 million in bonus.

The club membership price has dropped from $32,000 at its peak to the level of its transfer fee of about $7,400.

Yesterday, only about 20 seats in the public gallery were occupied. In one of them was Mr Lim, who chose to sit there rather than where the rest of the parties were sitting behind the lawyers.

Shareholders

They were the club's former shareholders: Mr Lawrence Ang, Mr William Tan and Mr Dennis Foo and one of its current owners, Ms Margaret Tung.

The other shareholder, Mr Lin Jian Wei, represented by Senior Counsel Chelva Rajah, was not in court.

What may finally come up in this case is the truth of what had transpired behind the scenes in the running of this club over the last decade or so.

With the documents produced for the case making 200 volumes and tens of thousands of pages, we may finally find out where the millions have gone.

This article was first published in The New Paper on September 16, 2008.