GEORGE TOWN, July 2 — Consortium Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd’s (CZC) Datuk Zarul Ahmad Mohd Zulkifli said that they were conned by individuals who claimed to be the "powers that be” in the RM22 million graft allegations levelled against the company.

The CZC Senior Executive Director said the two individuals had claimed to be the powers that be so if CZC did not comply with their demands, actions will be taken against them.

"It is like putting a gun to our head. We were conned into it in that sense,” he said in an interview with Malay Mail today.

Zarul confirmed that CZC has indeed paid out the RM22 million to the two individuals but could not elaborate further on this.

"MACC is investigating this so we can’t go beyond than saying this,” he said, using the initials of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

He added that the company had conducted everything according to the rule of law.

Zarul also said the company had met with the Penang state government to explain why it had paid out the RM22 million.

"We met with the state exco two weeks ago and fully explained the circumstances and they were happy with our explanations,” he said.

According to Zarul, the Penang state executive council has also accepted their explanations.

The MACC started a probe into the proposed RM6.3 billion undersea tunnel project back in 2016 and continued the probe early this year.

Early this year, MACC arrested several individuals, including a "Datuk Seri” who had allegedly accepted RM19 million from CZC to stop anti-graft investigations against it. 

The agency had detained four senior executives for questioning in its investigations into the undersea tunnel case and conducted raids at various offices including state government agencies last month.