‘Our father’s not a millionaire’
Hamid Apdal’s daughters shocked that media is criminalising him
KOTA KINABALU: The children of ex-car salesman Hamid Apdal arrested by graft busters are saddened by claims he is a millionaire and he is being criminalised in the media.
Hamid’s eldest daughter Nurul Azirah said they were shocked to read news reports of their father being described as a millionaire. “This is so far from the truth. “Like other families, we have our struggles,” 26-year-old Nurul Azirah told a press conference, adding that her father was issued a bankruptcy notice in 2014 and seven years ago, their first house was auctioned off.
Among others who were also present at the press conference were her younger sisters Nurul Amizah, 25, Nurul Amisah, 23 and Nurul Azureen, 19.
Hamid, the younger brother of Warisan president Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, was arrested on Tuesday by the Malaysian AntiCorruption Commission (MACC) in its probe into the alleged siphoning of rural development funds meant for Sabah.
Nurul Azirah said she and Nurul Amizah were married with families of their own and continued to live with their parents.
“There are 15 people living in that terrace house. It’s not a massive bungalow as claimed in some reports,” she added.
A tearful Nurul Azirah said her father had nothing to do with the Rural and Regional Development Ministry and had worked as a car salesman before they were born.
She said their father’s income was from letting Felda use their family land to cultivate oil palm on the east coast of Semporna.
Nurul Azirah said they were worried for the health of their father, whom they described as a shy and quiet person who did not like to trouble others.
“Even if there is something wrong with him, he is not the type to express it.
“He would rather put up with it so as not to inconvenience other people,” she said in appealing to the MACC not to extend her father’s five-day remand order that expires tomorrow.
Nurul Azirah said the last time they saw their father was when MACC officials brought him to the house on Tuesday.
There were about six of them and they went through cupboards, cabinets and even knocked on walls, she said, adding that they took away some documents after spending an hour in the house.
Hamid was the seventh person arrested in connection with a graft probe into the alleged skimming of up to RM1.5bil in federal project allocations in Sabah through the Rural and Regional Development Ministry.
The MACC is expected to make more arrests as it sifts through about 350 projects that were given to some 60 companies between 2009 and 2015.
The money was allegedly siphoned from RM7.5bil worth of project funds.
The MACC has so far frozen RM170mil in bank accounts and assets of some of the companies involved.