KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 22 — Datuk Abdul Latiff Ahmad today denied that a woman who was named in a news report as having been involved in the controversial Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) scandal is his wife.
In a statement today, the minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Special Functions) said that the person, Zainab Mohd Salleh, is not his spouse as mentioned in the report.
"Referring to a news report that went viral relating to the investigation on the Littoral Combat Ship project, I insist that Zainab Mohd Salleh is not my wife as stated in the report. As a Cabinet member, I am prepared to cooperate fully, if the authorities want to conduct further investigation," he said in a statement this afternoon.
Abdul Latiff is the former deputy defence minister, who had served during Barisan Nasional's (BN) time. He later hopped to Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu), after BN lost in the 14th general election, which triggered a wave of party hopping among MPs.
Earlier today, news portal MalaysiaNow reported that Zainab is allegedly one of the owners of Sousmarin Armada Ltd which is involved in the LCS project as being "dubiously addressed in Paris although payment to it was released in Singapore, a pattern rampant among other contractors awarded with the LCS work."
MalaysiaNow reported that Zainab's name was also allegedly linked to another company that had received millions of dollars for the LCS project through suspicious foreign accounts.
"The company was found to have been registered in Malta and Labuan under the same name," the report quoted an anonymous source as saying.
The source further said that the two companies were "operated as phantoms".
"They only had virtual offices, or in other words, they did not have any office.
"Both were de-registered sometime between 2014 and 2019," the unnamed source further said, adding that investigators believe that both offshore companies were used by DCNS, the French military contractor; now known as Naval Group, appointed to design the combat ships.
PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli had in a statement, also named Zainab, alleging her to be the second wife of Abdul Latiff, and the owner of the company registered in Malta,
News portal The Edge reported that the said company was also named in the Panama Papers as well as the Paradise Papers, which disclosed how offshore companies hid money from illegal activities globally.
The LCS project is the largest procurement in the history of the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) with a total cost of RM9 billion. The said contract began in 2013 with a ten-year time frame and six LCS ships were expected to be built and delivered to the country by the end of 2023.
Cost overruns for the LCS project totalled RM1.4 billion, with RM400 million used to pay old debts from an old patrol vessel project, PAC chairman Wong Kah Woh said on August 4.The Ipoh Timor MP added that 15 per cent of the equipment for the LCS project worth RM1.7 billion has also become obsolete after sitting in store for too long and that not even one ship was delivered, when five should have been, this month.
