REVIEW OF REPORT THAT ‘CLEARED’ NAJIB
PAC to review documents, call up old, new witnesses from Oct 9
THE Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will “resurrect and deconstruct” its previouslyconcluded report on the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal that “cleared” former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
What will land on the table of the current committee, which was appointed in August, are crucial documents, including those which were not made privy to PAC in the past, as well as “possible new evidence”.
Its chairman, Datuk Seri Dr Ronald Kiandee, said as part of PAC’s 10 terms of reference in the 1MDB proceedings, the committee would relook documents that had weighed in on the previous findings, including those which could not be verified by the Audit Department.
Najib had been lined-up as among those who will be called up before the committee.
“I understand (that he) was cleared, but we will refer again to the statements that we have now.
“I cannot say much about it now because we have yet to meet him, but we can most likely talk more on this after our proceedings with the Pekan member of parliament.
“It also depends on the new evidence we get along the way, when we reopen the case, where we will hear from new and old witnesses,” he told the New Straits Times.
The two previous PAC chairmen, Datuk Hasan Arifin, who oversaw the proceedings before the report was tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2016, as well as his predecessor, Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed, will also be called up to shed light on contentious matters.
Kiandee said PAC, which would hold its first sitting on the case on Oct 9, would also look into transactions involving the company’s Air Itam land in Penang, which happened despite a freeze imposed by the state government.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng had said all 94.7ha of the land, had been surreptitiously sold to Cayman Islands-based Silk Road Southeast Asia Real Estate Ltd for 4.25 billion yuan (RM2.7 billion) on Aug 24 last year, had netted a profit of RM1.32 billion based on the original RM1.38 billion purchase price.
The 10 terms of reference first lists the United States Department of Justice’s report on 1MDB, followed by the Air Itam land, as well as 1MDB monies in Switzerland and Singapore.
The subsequent terms refer to, among others, the Finance Ministry’s bail out of 1MDB, and the company’s rationalisation plan.
The committee is planning to hear insights from the authors of the newly-published books, The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB; as well as Billion Dollar Whale.
Kiandee told the NST that 18 witnesses had been lined up for the upcoming proceedings.
Representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a 1MDB auditor that reported the company’s non-compliance with basic corporate governance or management principles, will be called up to testify on Oct 9.
Former auditor-general Tan Sri Ambrin Buang is scheduled to appear on Oct 29.
“We will relook at this holistically... on what is lacking, what needs to be adjusted, witnesses that need to be called in and those we need to recall, including the Pekan MP and Jho Low (fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho), if the police can get hold of him. He is new in the list of witnesses,” he said.