UMS contractor denies making RM42 million false claim
TENOM: Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan) vice president Datuk Peter Anthony has strongly denied any misconduct on the part of his company while undertaking a work contract of Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), as had been widely claimed in the social media.
Peter said he was taking the opportunity to clarify the misleading information that had gone viral in the social media, which allegedly spread information that there were problems or wrongdoing by him as manager of his company carrying out works in UMS.
“Among the allegation of certain parties was that I had made a false claim of more than RM42 million. I would like to make it clear that there is no truth to these allegations and there is no problem or wrongdoing committed by my company all this while,” he clarified at a press conference held at the Warisan office here on Saturday.
Peter said: “Today (Saturday), I received the certificate confirming the completion of contract from UMS, whereby it clearly stated that all the works done by his company have been in compliance with all rules and scope of work as stipulated in the contract.
“The certificate confirming the completion of contract with UMS stated all works relating to the conditions of the contract were carried out to their (UMS) satisfaction. Hence, with the glowing remark stated in the certificate, there is absolutely no problem that had arisen but allegations to the contrary were made by other parties just to smear my reputation.”
On the company’s documents that were taken by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) some time ago, Peter requested the MACC to return them immediately “because as can be clearly seen today (Saturday) based on the certificate confirming the completion of contract with UMS received by us, it is clear that the company has not committed any wrongdoing or offence.”
According to Peter, as a contractor, whenever his company forwards a claim to the government, the government would have their own engineers to assess and their committee to evaluate all the contract works done before giving their approval.
He said that if there were any problems in the contract or in the claims made, these could be returned to the company for clarification, but what happened in this case was that an allegation was made that the company had deviated or made false claims over the years.
“It must also be remembered that the contract is part of a government project and the government offered the contract and not my company, therefore any problems should be referred to the government or UMS.
“Any typographical errors and so in the contract should be referred to the government that offered the contract,” Peter said.
“Hence, today, I strongly deny the allegations that have gone viral in the social media, and I am being investigated by the MACC for making false claims. We have never made any false claims and all payments, including the certificate confirming the completion of contract from UMS have been received so there is no question of us making a false claim,” he said.
Peter admitted that he had been investigated for almost two years on this matter but up to now, he has no idea what is going on, because he reckons, if someone has committed an offence, he should be charged and the government, or the government agency concerned, should prosecute him.
“In my case, we will give full cooperation to the MACC or any agency on whatever charges that may be thrown at us bearing in mind the possible ulterior motives now that election is close approaching.
“But I believe that as long as we are on the right side of the law, we have nothing to worry about however long this case continues.
“I would stress here that we have never committed any offence and request that the government or government agency return all the company’s documents to us, as we are a bumiputera contractor who have every right to manage our company’s working arrangements,” he said.
Peter believes that many will take the opportunity to make scurrilous allegations against him or his company, but his principle is that he has done no wrong as evidenced from the letter issued by UMS.
According to him, the contract has been confirmed fully completed and paid. The letter from UMS also clearly states whatever faults in any of the works that have been rectified to the satisfaction of UMS.
“For us, there is no problem except we do not know what was the motive behind all the allegations. We will look into aspects of the law on this and advice from my lawyer on what legal action we can take on this matter.”