As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on May 06, 2015
1. Zamil Ibrahim of KITA seems fond of saying things about which he seems confused or ignorant.
2. Firstly I never said RM42 billion had gone missing. What I said was that RM42 billion was borrowed by 1MDB.
3. Some of the borrowed money was used to buy power plants and Government land along Jalan Tun Razak and the Sungai Besi Airport land at ridiculously low price. These are marked up greatly and claimed as assets. Private land in Penang with lots of squatters was also bought at a much higher price.
4. 1 billion USD (RM3.6 billion) was paid to Petro Saudi and some other purchases and investments.
5. Another RM6 billion was alleged to be in Cayman but now is not in Cayman. All the money is said to have been brought back. A tranche was brought back presumably to Malaysia. A second tranche was brought back and as explained by Dato’ Sri Najib was deposited with a Swiss bank in Singapore. Now the Swiss bank has denied that this money was deposited with it. So where is the money?
6. Adding generously up all the money that is known to have been spent, there remains some RM14 billion to RM20 billion that cannot be accounted for. Since the 1MDB advisor cannot explain where this money is, I must assume that it is somehow lost or stolen or misused.
7. My sons are not billionaires but they do borrow millions to finance their businesses. Mirzan, does most of his business outside Malaysia but was forced to sell his shipping business to Petronas during the financial crisis. Petronas made a handsome profit selling part of the fleet when the economy recovered. Petronas policy is not to answer questions but Petronas accounts are available and can be examined to verify whether I lie or not. Mirzan is not millionaire.
8. Mokhzani has a steel fabrication business started after I ceased to be the Prime Minister. It took him more than 3 years to make the money he is supposed to have. He did not steal the money. What he has he earned. Nobody’s money has disappeared because of his business.
9. I did not raise loans when I was PM to help my sons. If you have evidence, show it.
10. Tunku Abdul Aziz tries to pin the BMF scandal on me on the basis of a statement by Lorraine Esme Othman as quoted in his article thus:
11. “He (Lorraine) asked me (Tunku) whether he alone could have made the decision to move billions of US Dollars without instruction from “high above”.”
12. He assumes that “high above” Lorraine was me. There are lots of people high above Lorraine. I will not name them here because I don’t like making inferences when I have no concrete evidence. Lorraine went to London where he was jailed.
13. Neither Bank Bumiputra nor BMF were directly under me. I had nothing to do with their management. Please show proof of my involvement in the affair of BB or BMF.
14. I was informed of the measures to be taken to resolve the scandal and I agreed to sending an officer to check on the deals with the Carrian Group. He was subsequently murdered.
15. Tunku Aziz is a director of the International Instittute of Public Ethics and a member of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.
16. I would like to ask Tunku Aziz whether his attempt to accuse me of being involved in the BMF scandal on such flimsy ground is ethical or not.
17. And as member of the Anti-Corruption Commission, he can make a full investigation of my record to find out how many billions I stole from the Government as he seems to imply. If he fails, he should at least have the decency to apologise.
18. And as someone who professes to be concerned about corruption, shouldn’t he ask how Jho Low and Riza Aziz have hundreds of millions of dollars. And shouldn’t he be interested in public officers who live well beyond their means. Or has he got selective awareness of what is going on around him. An American paper reported that now Malaysia is among the ten most corrupt countries in the world. Shouldn’t he try to find out why?
