KUALA LUMPUR, May 17 — Putrajaya revealed today that it was because of Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) that two paragraphs from the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) report on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) were removed.
Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said said BNM had told PAC chief Datuk Hasan Ariffin all information provided by the central bank was confidential and not for public consumption.
“The PAC chairman received a notice from BNM stating that all the information it has given is ‘confidential for the purpose of investigations only and not to be used by the court or public reports’,” she said in a written reply to Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng.
She added that all members of the parliamentary panel were informed of this via a letter from Hasan to BNM's deputy governor on April 6.
“This is because the PAC report is for public consumption and such information cannot be included in it,” the minister added.
Lim had in his question asked if Hasan was allowed to erase paragraphs in the original PAC report regarding links between businessman Low Taek Jho, Good Star Limited and the PetroSaudi Group.
DAP MP Tony Pua and other opposition members of the PAC had last month accused Hasan of editing the parliamentary panel’s report on 1MDB without the knowledge or approval of other members.
According to Pua, Hasan cut off a sentence from the report that said: “Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) was voluntarily informed by the country's authorities that Good Star Limited is a company owned by an individual with no links to the PetroSaudi Group”.
In a statement later, Hasan responded by saying that “the deletion of two sentences in no way affects the final report by the Public Account Committee (PAC) on 1MDB”, and that the sentences were deleted because of their unclear status, or because the matter was under investigation and not for public consumption.
* An earlier version of this article contained inaccuracies that have since been corrected. The errors are regretted.
