KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 — A new team must be brought in to sit on the board of troubled 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) to make sure it does not fall further into financial ruin, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said today in response to a report that the current board plans to resign en-bloc.

Lim claimed the ongoing fiasco will only continue to fester if the board’s existing members were to remain with the state-owned fund as they are part of the reasons why 1MDB managed to rack up a RM42 billion debt pile.

“You’ve got to get a new team to come in, to make sure the rot doesn’t go deeper,” he said on the sidelines of an event here.

“At least there’ll be answers. If you get the same team to run the show, you won’t be able to get the answers,” he added.

The Edge Financial Daily reported today the entire 1MDB board will likely be made to step down as early as next month.

Citing unnamed sources, the business paper reported the move as a prelude to wind down the troubled investment firm.

Its sources said the quit plan may also include those in 1MDB’s advisory board helmed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

“This will happen in July or August,” the paper quoted the sources as saying.

1MDB’s board members includes chairman Tan Sri Lodin Wok Kamaruddin, Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi, who was formerly the firm’s chief executive, Tan Sri Ismee Ismail, Tan Sri Ong Gim Huat and Ashvin J. Valiram.

Lim today said the move—if proven true—would be a step in the right direction in establishing lines of accountability and responsibility for the 1MDB debacle, which he claimed is solely responsible for flailing investor confidence and the weakening ringgit.

He stressed, however, that resigning does not absolve the current board of the responsibility to explain how and why they allowed the fund to engage in questionable financial transactions and take on so much debt.

Najib must also provide clear answers to critical questions surrounding 1MDB, especially the US$1.1 billion (RM4.1 billion) in assets parked in Singapore’s BSI Bank, Lim added.

“It must be cash you put in the bank, isn’t it? If not cash, then what can it be? Gold bars? It cannot be gold bars, cannot be cincin also,” he said, alluding to a previous controversy regarding the alleged purchase of a RM24 million ring linked to Najib’s wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.

“If not assets, what sort of units are you talking about? How come he cannot even answer that? And so long as he refuses to answer these questions, nobody will  trust him on 1MDB,” Lim said.

1MDB was incorporated in 2009, after the prime minister announced the decision to turn the Terengganu Investment Authority state fund into a federal agency.

Since then, 1MDB has been dogged by negative publicity over its finances and debt, and most recently cash flow problems over the repayment of a RM2 billion loan.