Public Accounts Committee (PAC) member Tony Pua says Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman Said lied in saying that PAC members were informed about the deleted lines from the PAC Report on 1MDB.
“Azalina lied in Parliament that the PAC chairperson informed or showed its members any letter from Bank Negara Malaysia which stated that the information provided to the PAC was confidential and not for public consumption,” Pua said in a statement today.
The minister, in her parliamentary reply to a question on the matter by Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng, said PAC chairperson (Hasan Arifin) had received Bank Negara's information which stated all the information given was "confidential for the purpose of intelligence only for court usage or public report".
Azalina also said that all PAC members were informed of the matter via a letter penned by the PAC chief to the deputy governor of the central bank on April 6.
However, Pua said, Azalina’s reply was "at best misleading, at worst an outright lie with regard to the above matter".
The PAC, he said, had its final meeting, which approved the final PAC report on 1MDB for publication on April 4. The report was tabled in Parliament three days later.
“Hasan never at any point of time communicated with the PAC members on any developments subsequent to the meeting on April 4.
“Hence PAC members were shocked to discover, upon perusing the tabled report, that two crucial lines in the report was deleted unilaterally by the PAC chairperson," he said.
Last month, Pua pointed out that Hasan had deleted certain lines from the PAC report on 1MDB that were crucial to the investigation.
The lines concerned Bank Negara's information that Good Star Ltd, into which US$1.03 billion from 1MDB's joint venture with PetroSaudi International was diverted to, was owned by an individual and not linked to the PetroSaudi group as claimed.
Pua further argued today that the deleted lines had indicated a brazen case of misappropriation by 1MDB, which also proved the allegations made by 1MDB critics such as Sarawak Report, The Edge, The Wall Street Journal and opposition critics.
“The question then is, what exactly are the damaging contents of this letter dated April 6 which is so ‘confidential’ and cannot be shared with the public?” he queried.
But what is even more interesting, he added, is how Azalina was privy to a letter from the deputy Bank Negara governor to the PAC chairperson, dated April 6, when PAC members of the PAC are "completely clueless about the matter".
“Is there now a collusion between the PAC chairperson and the Prime Minister’s Department to cover up the entire scandal by scheming a coordinated response to the clear cut abuse of power by Hasan?” Pua further asked.
Later, Azalina in a statement denied that she had lied to Parliament, accusing Pua of making baseless allegation.
