Anwar: No details given
Ex-BNM adviser failed to give 1992 forex losses info, RCI hears
PUTRAJAYA: Former Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) adviser Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop did not give detailed information on the foreign exchange (forex) losses of 1992, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim told the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI).
Anwar, the 21st witness called, said Nor Mohamed had acted beyond the mandate given to him by failing to provide a correct report on the losses to him and former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
“Then BNM governor Tan Sri Jaffar Hussein discussed the matter with him and agreed that Nor Mohamed should tender his resignation.
“If he had declined to resign, I would have ordered for him to be sacked,” Anwar said yesterday. Nor Mohamed resigned as the adviser in 1994.
Anwar, 70, was responding to a question by conducting officer Julia Ibrahim before the RCI five-man panel chaired by Petronas chairman Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan, set up to investigate on the forex losses in early the 1990s.
The former Finance Minister said he had gone to see Dr Mahathir with former Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Clifford Francis Herbert to give a briefing on the losses but the prime minister did not give any instruction.
He said Jaffar informed him of the forex losses before he tabled the Bank Negara Financial Report 1992 to the Cabinet in March 1993.
Anwar denied that he concealed the actual losses by the central bank to the Cabinet, despite being repeatedly asked by Mohd Sidek if he was trying to conceal the losses.
Dr Mahathir showed up at the hearing at about 2.15pm and left at 4.15pm during yesterday’s proceeding.
Earlier in the morning, the central bank’s director of foreign exchange management department, Azman Mat Ali, 54, said Dr Mahathir had never entered the bank’s forex trading room.
Azman was replying to a question by Dr Mahathir's counsel Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla who asked whether his client entered the room when the forex was traded. Azman replied: “He never did”.
He said when he was first transferred to the foreign exchange section as a dealer, his job was to buy and sell forex as directed by the bank’s management.
“I did not remember the specific figure of the transaction but the amount can reach more than US$1bil a day,” he said, adding that apart from Nor Mohamed, to whom he reported, and a chief dealer, nobody knew the extent of the forex trading.
He said he carried out the transactions on the instruction of Nor Mohamed. The hearing continues on Sept 18.