KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 21 — The final report by the Dutch-led investigation team on the downing of Flight MH17 indicated Putrajaya’s full co-operation, Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai insisted today after a news report claimed that Malaysian authorities had tried to hinder the crash probe.

The Bentong MP said he was “disheartened and saddened” by the Australian News Corp report that said Putrajaya and Malaysia Airlines (MAS) had actively sought to stop the investigation allegedly to avoid scrutiny, a claim the minister said was untrue.

“I am disheartened and saddened to hear the news as we have given our full support and we worked closely.

“You can see in the final Dutch Safety Regulation report that we gave our full co-operation… if it is a speculative news then I would like to deny it to be untrue,” Liow told reporters here.

Liow stressed that the focus of the investigation now is to find the perpetrators behind MH17’s crash.

“We have given all the co-operation they needed so now the focus is to find who are the perpetrators [sic],” he said.

Two days ago, Australia News Corp in its report claimed that a section of the four-volume detailed analysis report released last week had stated that both Putrajaya and Malaysia Airlines — the owner of the ill-fated plane — had “actively sought to hinder the investigation to avoid scrutiny”, though they later chose to cooperate “in a limited way”.

“From the start of the investigation, it proved to be more complicated to organise interviews with employees of the Malaysian Government and the airline in Kuala Lumpur, the same applied to obtaining the documents investigators requested (from) them,” the story claimed, quoting investigators cited in a section on failure of collecting international data.

The report said Malaysia eventually began sharing information, only to again see cooperation “temporarily suspended by order of the airline’s headquarters”.

It was only in January this year that Malaysian authorities allowed access to its employees and helped with information on the cause of the crash, the report added.

Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year, killing all 298 passengers on board.

The final investigation report was released last week, 15 months after the incident based on a probe undertaken by a joint investigation team from the Netherlands, Ukraine, Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia.

The victims were predominantly from the Netherlands, but also included citizens of Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines, Canada and New Zealand.