KUALA LUMPUR, March 3 — Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz today called Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak’s claim that Putrajaya has yet to pay “a single sen” of 1MDB’s principal debt baseless.
The federal government will begin servicing the principal debt once the bonds issued by the sovereign fund and its subsidiaries mature, at least two of them by May this year, Tengku Zafrul explained in Parliament this morning.
The first tranche of payments will start May 11, 2022, for bonds issued under 1MDB Energy Limited and the 1MDB Energy (Langat) worth RM7.3 billion. All bond payment will continue until 2039.
“The balance of our commitment is about RM38 billion,” Zafrul replied to the Member of Parliament for Bagan and his predecessor Lim Guan Eng during Question Time.
“The principal is RM32 billion with the interest amounting to RM6.5 billion so that the allegation that we haven’t paid the principal debt is baseless considering the bonds issued by the fund will mature later,” the minister added.
Najib, who has been convicted of multiple charges of corruption and power abuse involving funds worth over RM40 million embezzled from SRC International, said in Parliament yesterday that no public funds were used to repay 1MDB’s principal debt.
He argued that most of the funds to service the debt would have come from entities like Goldman Sachs, audit firms KPMG and Deloitte, Ambank and the US Department of Justice (DoJ).
These institutions had returned some of the funds embezzled from the firm totalling RM23 billion to Malaysia. SRC International was a former subsidiary of 1MDB.
The Malaysian government has repaid RM13.3 billion of 1MDB's debt so far, with RM38.81 billion still outstanding as of Dec 31 last year, according to the Finance Ministry.
The Finance Ministry said the misappropriated funds, which it has seized and recovered from multiple jurisdictions totalling RM19.1 billion, are only enough to cover repayment for this year.
