GEORGE TOWN, March 6 — Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow has reserved his right to take legal action against controversial blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin’s graft allegations on the Penang undersea tunnel and paired roads project.
The Penang lawmaker said currently, it is best to leave it to the authorities to investigate the case since the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had lodged a police report over Raja Petra’s blog posts.
Chow said the Penang state government was not implicated in the allegations made in the blog posts except for individuals in the state administration.
“We had discussions on action to be taken including lodging police report and filing court cases and wait for the authorities to investigate,” he said when asked about Raja Petra’s allegations during a press conference at his office today.
He said since there was a police report lodged, they should just wait for the police to complete investigations into it.
“The case was investigated by the MACC since 2017 and 2018 and Consortium Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd’s Zarul had received letter from MACC informing him they have no further action,” he said.
Chow was referring to the company undertaking the RM6.3 billion undersea tunnel and paired road project, Consortium Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd’s Senior Executive Director Datuk Zarul Ahmad Mohd Zulkifli.
He added that he had never been called for an interview or have his statement recorded by the MACC in relation to the case.
“I feel sad that my name is mentioned this time, this is the first time in my 32 years political career,” he said, referring to the allegations in Raja Petra’s blog.
Raja Petra alleged in several posts that several Penang state exco, including Chow, was implicated in MACC investigations into the undersea tunnel and three paired roads project.
He claimed Chow, who was then a state exco, had received RM50,000 from Zarul and also alleged that several other state excos similarly received large sums of cash from Zarul.
Zarul has since issued a statement denying the allegations and labelling it as “pure fiction”.
