With the straightest of faces, the chief executive of doomed satellite company NewSat Ltd, Adrian Ballintine, told his fellow directors that he had always been "very bad at looking after myself" despite pocketing $3 million for 2014.

After broadcasting on Wednesday a leaked NewSat board room video showing chairman Richard Green threatening to punch independent director, Australia Post deputy chairman Brendan Fleiter, Fairfax Media has obtained another extraordinary board room recording.

Taken in June last year, the fresh video shows Fleiter and his fellow independent director, Andrew Plympton, imploring Ballintine to pay a $558,000 tax debt he owed on his $1.2 million bonus, which he got in addition to a $1.07 million salary and shares worth $1.15 million.

But Ballintine refused to pay and took the extraordinary step of instructing law firm Gadens to write letters threatening to sue NewSat for $2.2 million at the very time it was fighting for survival.

Ballintine's legal letters claimed the company had failed to uphold a clause in his employment contract for shareholders to be asked to vote on him being issued with "performance rights" to shares.

Fleiter and Plympton tried to explain how the tax debt and the claim over the performance rights were separate issues and should be dealt with accordingly. "Can't you just pay it back AB," Fleiter appealed. "Can't you just write a cheque and sort out the other stuff later?"

"No unfortunately I can't," Ballintine replied. Moments earlier, Ballintine had gone to great lengths to show his board colleagues his selfless nature. "One of the things is, and you know this and I know this, that I have always been very bad at is looking after myself. So when the shares didn't go up in December everyone knows that I was filthy. And I was because I thought you had mucked it up.

"But in the spirit of being the CEO for a long time and in the spirit of the way that I have worked with this company and in the spirit of the way that I have always put others before myself…there was a contractual obligation to deal with me."

Fleiter said in the event Ballintine did not pay his tax bill and it had to be reported in NewSat's upcoming public accounts, "people are going to look at us and think 'what are you blokes doing in there'"?

Listening in thousands of kilometres away was NewSat's biggest shareholder and director, Singapore businessman Ching Chiat Kwong. Ching has just loaned NewSat another $US6 million and he was not happy with what he was hearing.

He demanded to know who on the board had "signed things off" for Ballintine. If Ching was talking about the CEO's 2014 package of salary, bonus and shares, it was the remuneration committee of chairman Green, Ballintine's US-based friend and shareholder in his motor yacht business, Chuck Ellison, and legal counsel Bill Abbott.

"Because I think they need to leave," Ching continued.

"Because it's becoming very unbecoming, unprofessional attitude. This is a public company. We follow by the books."

Ching added that he believed the company owed Ballintine what he had claimed but warned that directors never again be awarded with performance rights or shares. "This is a wrong culture," he said.

As the board was clearly split on approaches to governance, Ching made a futile appeal for unity and let everyone know that he knew there had been talk behind his back.

"Everybody is talking that this Chinese f----r from Singapore is trying to shake the tree and bring down NewSat. And this is not my intention. Actions speak louder than words. Nobody has put in more money than me…and I just want this company to be good."

After Ching hung up, the rest of the board appeared slightly bemused and confused as to exactly who he wanted to leave. Green said he knew who Ching wanted to go but refused to divulge when asked. "Why should I," he protested before going on to query Ching's command of English.

As Fairfax Media reported this week, much of the turmoil at NewSat related to a host of conflicts of interest and payments between NewSat and Ballintine's Gold Coast Cresta Motor Yachts.

New emails and photographs obtained by Fairfax Media this week reveal that NewSat arranged for a corporate jet to fly Ballintine and Cresta's finance boss Jason Cullen from Essendon Airport to Swan Hill to meet with an accountancy firm in 2012.

However, this trip had nothing to do with NewSat. Months later, the owners of the Swan Hill firm registered a company which had become a shareholder in Cresta. Ballintine did not respond to inquiries about who paid for the jet.