A simple denial is not enough, says Wee

PETALING JAYA: A simple denial that graft is not involved in the Penang undersea tunnel project just because the mega project underwent an open tender process is not enough, says MCA.

“Firstly, it was not an open tender but a Request for Proposal exercise. Secondly, it is the owner of the company that won the ‘open tender’ that made those allegations of kickbacks, if the leaked Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) documents are authentic.

“Certainly this scandal deserves better than bare denials from the Prime Minister and Lim (Guan Eng) as it involves grand corruption in the scale of billions if the papers are authentic or it involves forgery of MACC documents, which is also a serious offence,” said MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong in a statement yesterday.

Political blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, in a series of articles posted on his blog over the past week, made an expose based on the leaked documents.

The blogger alleged that several Penang state exco members were implicated in the MACC’s probe into the project.

Lim, the Finance Minister, on Sunday said the Penang government conducts open tender for projects, hence there is no issue of corruption when it comes to the undersea tunnel project.

The 7.2km undersea tunnel is part of a RM6.3bil project, which includes three paired roads.

On March 1, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad rub- bished the graft allegations and called Raja Petra a liar, saying “he has been telling lies all the time. And you still believe him?”.

Earlier, Consortium Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd senior executive director Datuk Zarul Ahmad Mohd Zulkifli denied the bribery claims, saying the blog posts by Raja Petra were “pure fiction and clearly concocted to deceive and defame me, my company and the Penang state government”.

However, Dr Wee, who is also the Ayer Hitam MP, yesterday said Raja Petra’s expose has come with numerous photos of documents with information that is very detailed and consistent with his own findings before the 14th General Election, after a long-running exchange with Lim over the controversial project.

He also noted that MACC had conducted an extensive investigation on this scandal prior to GE14 where several people were remanded, only for the investigations to go quiet after Pakatan Harapan won GE14.

“The elephant in the room is that MACC itself has not responded to the media if the papers are authentic or otherwise. If the leaked papers are fake, the usual practice would have been for MACC to publicly deny its authenticity.

“I note that MACC has made a police report on Raja Petra’s expose but the agency has refused to explain the nature of its complaint.

“MACC must confirm whether the leaked documents are authentic or otherwise,” he said.