More to come

Guan Eng hints of more scandals as documents are still being looked into at ministry

Finance Minister says certain ‘red files’ will open a floodgate of scandals.

PUTRAJAYA: The dust has not settled just yet, as far as the “red files” issue is concerned.

Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng has hinted at certain “red files” which will open a floodgate of scandals following a probe at the ministry.

“If you talk about scandals running into billions, the nasty ones, I think that is about it. But the probe is ongoing. The others are smaller ones, in millions. We will deal with them later.

“Documents are still being dissected. It is a painful process but a necessary one. You have to wait and clean it up,” he told Bernama in an interview yesterday, which marked the first month since Pakatan Harapan won the 14th General Election.

Asked whether some files could have been destroyed before the change of government, Lim said: “You can destroy documents but we can re-construct them. These days you got money trails. So it is very hard to hide.”

He said when he reported for duty at the Treasury on May 22, what was laid on his table was worse than he expected.

“I was shocked. I have been swimming in a sea of red ink (ever since),” he said.

It was revealed that the Government had been forking out money, amounting to RM6.9bil, to service the 1MDB debts since April 2017.

This followed the revelation that the previous Barisan Nasional government had also used money raised from a deal with sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd as well as proceeds from a land sale to Bank Negara to help service 1MDB’s debt obligations.

And while Malaysians are still coming to terms with these pieces of information, a gas pipeline scandal involving a staggering RM9.41bil came to light, also linked to 1MDB.

“They were literally lying through their teeth,” said an irate Lim.

“So, they (BN) say, they were following IMF standards. So, it is RM686.8bil (debt). But what about the government guaranteed debts (amounting to RM199.1bil)?

“And public-private partnership projects worth RM201.4bil, which all totals up to an RM1 trillion debt.

“In economic terms, a doubtful debt is seen as a bad debt, that should be written out.

“So, what we have here is bad debt that we are paying on behalf of companies like 1MDB,” he pointed out.

Lim said that Malaysia was fortunate due to the change of government.

“We can now really address our debt issue,” he said, adding that the new Government was not into “sugarcoating”.

He said the people deserved to know the truth on the real state of the country’s financial affairs.

Lim, a former Penang chief minister, said Pakatan had not wasted time since its victory.

“The Prime Minister announced the abolishment of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), we have stabilised the fuel price, announced a Bantuan Sara Hidup Rakyat, and an RM400 special payment for civil servants of Grade 41 and below (for Hari Raya),” he added.

The Government also announced an RM200 special payment for pensioners.

“That is RM22bil given back to the people. We can do this without GST,” he said.

He added that more is needed to be done to cut down expenditure and increase savings.