KUALA LUMPUR, July 4 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers have applied to refer Barisan Nasional’s Simpang Renggam MP Liang Teck Meng (picture) to Parliament’s Rights and Privileges Committee for allegedly abusing his lawmaker’s privilege to defame Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

This morning, DAP Jelutong MP Jeff Ooi said the motion to refer was submitted to the Dewan Rakyat Speaker’s office yesterday evening. “The MP from Simpang Renggam claimed that he sourced his information from WikiLeaks... all of WikiLeak’s exposes on Malaysia are available on wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Malaysia.

“But it clearly shows that allegations of [Anwar’s] offshore accounts, including with Israeli National Bank, supposedly sourced from WikiLeaks to be patently untrue,” Ooi added.

Liang, from Gerakan, had cited a WikiLeaks cable when making his allegation during a parliamentary debate on Tuesday.

Liang had accused Anwar of having RM332 million stashed in 20 banks in four countries, including Israel.

Yesterday, three PKR lawmakers — Sim Tze Tzin Rafizi Ramli and Darrell Leiking — gave Liang a 2pm deadline to either produce evidence to substantiate his claim or retract his allegations in full.

They warned that they would otherwise refer him to the powerful Rights and Privileges Committee for deceiving the House with his claim.

But Liang refused to do so, saying the call by opposition MPs to refer him to the committee was aimed at deflecting attention and preventing the government from investigating the matter.

“I only asked for an investigation, if it’s not true, why refer me to Rights and Privilege Committee. Referring me to the committee looks like an attempt to prevent the government from investigating it,” he told reporters at the Dewan Rakyat lobby.

Anwar yesterday also denied that there was any information on him purportedly having a bank account in Israel, posted on the Wikileaks site as claimed by Liang.

“I have checked WikiLeaks, there’s no such claim mentioning me or an Israel bank account on the site,” he told reporters.