KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 — Federal minister M. Kulasegaran said he will seek investigations against MIC leaders allegedly involved in past scandals including to those linked to the Maika Holdings fraud that saw mostly poor Indians losing RM100 million.
The human resources minister told Malaysiakini in an interview that he would raise the matter to the Cabinet should the authorities fail to act.
“Murder, un-accountability, cheating, lying... wrongly managed temples, money siphoned out... all this will be made answerable,” the Ipoh Barat MP was quoted saying.
“I'm sure the necessary departments, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the attorney-general's chambers, police, will look into it and take action.
“After a certain time, if that doesn't take place, we will bring the matter to cabinet for appropriate action,” he added.
Kulasegaran was recently pressed to respond to a spate of allegations of wrongdoings involving MIC leaders at recently-held town hall session in Petaling Jaya earlier this month.
The DAP lawmaker reportedly said that some of these cases would be looked into without any prompting, but stressed that the law should take its course.
MIC had established Maika Holdings in the early 1980s as an investment company for its mostly poor party members.
The fund raised RM106 million from about 55,000 shareholders but failed to deliver returns after most of the money were believed to have been siphoned off by top party leaders.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was Barisan Nasional chairman at the time, had admitted that there was oversight on his part, Kulasegaran was quoted saying.
“He has said that he left it entirely to (former MIC president) S. Samy Vellu, and he didn't want to dwell on that matter,” the DAP minister told the news portal.
“Now he realises, he admits that there was oversight at the time. We will see what we can do to dig up these (past) wrongs.”
Kulasegaran also denied Dr Mahathir was complicit in the Maika scandal or any related to Indian affairs.
“Yes, he gave some of the funding, but he didn't ask (MIC) to cheat... He gave the money meant for the Indian community and that was (allegedly) siphoned out,” he told Malaysiakini.
