Findings come 10 months after NST broke story
KUALA LUMPUR: Yesterday’s release of the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s report came more than 10 months after the New Straits Times broke the story about the massive foreign exchange losses of the 1990s.
In an exclusive interview, former Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) assistant governor Datuk Abdul Murad Khalid told the NST that the losses were US$10 billion and not the RM9 billion disclosed by the central bank.
Murad, 64, who left BNM in 1999, had also raised questions on why no one was ever investigated or charged for what he described as the biggest forex losses in the world.
In the interview, he also shared the “behind-the-scenes” workings of the secretive BNM forex operations, claiming there had not been proper documentation of the huge transactions.
He also claimed that only a top central banker and a junior staff had a record of all the deals.
Murad had said the losses, valued at RM44 billion at the current exchange rate, was “real money that went down the drain”.
“The total losses were US$10 billion and not ringgit... our losses are in foreign currencies and not ringgit. It means that our (forex) reserves in US dollar, British pound and Japanese yen all went down the drain. It disappeared just like that and this is accumulated losses over several years.”
Murad had said there was no control and there was no investigation despite the huge losses.
“You lost US$10 billion, but there was no investigation. The police or the Anti-Corruption Agency (now the Malaysian AntiCorruption Commission) did not come. No one came to investigate,” he said.
He had also said that BNM was not supposed to speculate in the forex market.
Following the report, a special task force was formed by the government on March 14.
On June 2, the task force submitted its findings to the government, in which it recommended that an RCI be formed.
On July 15, the king assented to the forming of the RCI. The commission was given three months to complete its inquiry.
The RCI presented its findings to the king on Oct 13.
The findings were then presented to the cabinet on Nov 3, then made available to members of parliament yesterday.