KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 — DAP federal lawmaker Tony Pua called Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s bluff today and urged the former prime minister to come clean on the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) embezzlement scandal.
The Damansara MP said Najib cannot continue to claim ignorance over the billions of ringgit that had been allegedly funnelled into his private bank accounts when he is able to demonstrate detailed knowledge of funds siphoned from 1MDB’s wholly-owned subsidiary TRX City Sdn Bhd (TRXC) to pay its parent company’s debts.
“If Dato’ Seri Najib Razak feels strongly that he has been maligned with wrongful facts, we will be more than happy to welcome him back to the Ministry of Finance to explain where the RM3 billion misappropriated from TRXC have gone to, and if there’s any chance at all how 1MDB will be able to recover this money,” he said in a statement.
Pua noted that Najib had elaborated that the transactions from TRXC to 1MDB were “inter-company loans” that had been repaid on March 31 last year with the approval of MOF Inc, which were supposedly reviewed and signed off by the auditors of TRXC.
However, he said that if Najib’s assertions were correct, the Finance Ministry would not have to intervene to save TRXC.
“It is precisely because of the misappropriation by 1MDB that the Ministry is now forced to step in to rescue the project.
“The fact that TRX might still be able to eke out a profit does not invalidate the fact that it is a bailout,” he said.
Pua noted Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng’s disclosure last Thursday that the government was forced to extend up to RM2.8 billion of funds to ensure TRXC was able to fulfil its obligations to complete required infrastructure works for the 70-acre Tun Razak Exchange project after finding out that RM3.067 billion had been siphoned by 1MDB for other purposes.
“The siphoned funds were used mainly to service the interest payments for the billions of dollars of 1MDB borrowings which 1MDB was unable to repay on its own,” the DAP national publicity secretary asserted.
Pua reiterated that Najib has yet to deny that more than RM3 billion was taken 1MDB from TRXC as a “cover up” for what he described as “shenanigans” in the sovereign investment fund.
