The deposits for PAS candidates to contest a record number of seats in the 14th general election were funded by Umno, claims Sarawak Report.

The whistleblower portal claimed an aide to then Umno treasurer Salleh Said Keruak (above) had deposited RM2.5 million in cash into PAS' Bank Islam account.

"Sarawak Report has now received confirmation that this money paid to PAS was used to pay for several of PAS’s record numbers of election deposits at GE14 together with another million or so ringgit that was apparently later also deposited in cash by Umno into PAS accounts around the same time in the same way," it said.

The portal said it was about to submit this evidence to the London court as part of its editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown's defence against PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang's defamation suit.

However, PAS had since dropped the suit on the grounds that it was too costly to sustain.

Hadi had sued Rewcastle-Brown for claiming that Umno had channelled some RM90 million to PAS in a bid to woo the party ahead of the 14th general election.

In the last general election, PAS contested 155 seats, the most number of parliamentary seats contested by any one party in the country to date.

The deposit to contest a parliamentary seat in an election is RM10,000, while that for a state seat is RM5,000.