Pua: After editing PAC report, Hasan must reopen 1MDB probe
(MMO) – Datuk Hasan Arifin must convene a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting and reopen the investigation on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) after admitting that he had edited the panel’s report on the firm, DAP’s Tony Pua said today.
Pua, who is also a PAC member, pointed out that a renewed probe into the matter is also crucial in light of 1MDB’s ongoing dispute with Abu Dhabi sovereign fund International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) over its debt-asset swap agreement.
“In the light of the above, as well as the latest developments involving the complete collapse of 1MDB’s debt-asset swap agreement with IPIC, we once again call upon the PAC Chairman to call for an immediate PAC meeting and officially re-open our investigations on the troubled 1MDB.
“The failure to do so under the current circumstances would mean the failure of the PAC to fulfil our duties and obligations to the Parliament and the rakyat,” Pua said in a statement.
Yesterday, the DAP lawmaker claimed that Hasan had deleted a sentence that states that Good Star Limited ― which had received US$700 million in its RBS Coutts Bank Ltd account, part of the US$1 billion that 1MDB had invested in a joint venture with Saudi Arabian oil company PetroSaudi International Ltd, according to the PAC report ― is a company owned by a person not linked to the PetroSaudi Group.
Pua and other opposition members of the PAC accused Hasan yesterday of editing the parliamentary panel’s report on 1MDB without the knowledge or approval of other members.
According to Pua, Hasan allegedly cut off a sentence from the report that said: “Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) was voluntarily informed by the country’s authorities that Good Star Limited is a company owned by an individual with no links to the PetroSaudi Group”.
In a statement to Bernama last night, Hasan responded by saying that “the deletion of two sentences in no way affects the final report by the Public Account Committee (PAC) on 1MDB”, and that the sentences were deleted because of their unclear status, or because the matter was under investigation and not for public consumption.
“Firstly, if the ‘two sentences’ were indeed inconsequential to the PAC report, why did the Chairman find it necessary to delete them in the first place?
“Secondly, the PAC did not at any point empower the Chairman to delete these sentences. The fact of the matter is that the final meeting of the PAC which included members of the backbenchers and the opposition, approved the final draft which included the above information,” Pua said today.
The Petaling Jaya Utara MP said that the omitted sentences was crucial to the entire investigations of 1MDB because the company and its executives have testified to the PAC that Good Star Limited is a subsidiary of Petrosaudi, but failed to any proof to back this claim.
“All 1MDB could provide was a letter dated 2015 from Petrosaudi to 1MDB making a claim that Good Star Limited was part of the Petrosaudi Group.
“This letter would certainly hold no water in any court of law and the PAC would make itself a laughing stock of the world if we were to accept the letter at face value,” Pua added.
