An interim report by the Malaysian government into debt-laden state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) has found nothing suspicious after vetting its accounts, a parliamentary committee says.
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Additionally, a special taskforce is also carrying out a separate investigation into 1MDB’s accounts, after a report by the Wall Street Journal on Jul 3 that US$700 million was wired to the accounts of Mr Najib, chairman of the fund’s advisory board.
1MDB said in a statement that there was an official visit to their office by members of a special task force that is investigating the fund.
Nur Jazlan said the PAC meant to call current and previous top executives of 1MDB.
Asked whether the audit process took into account the allegation published last week in The Wall Street Journal that 1MDB funds had been channelled into the personal bank accounts of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, Nur Jazlan replied: “No”.
He said the documents included bank statements and agreement papers which were considered crucial for the ongoing audit.
Pua said the PAC has yet to receive documents from Deloitte and KPMG, who were supposed to have submitted these to MoF.
“If proceeds of crime have been transferred to Singapore, we would like to consider whether an offence has been committed in Singapore”, Chua Jia Leng, head of the Singapore police’s (STRO) was quoted by WSJ, as writing to Bank Negara.
WSJ said Mr Low received the money in his account at the Singapore branch of Swiss bank BSI, incidentally where 1MDB had stored US$1.1 billion from 2011 to 2013 before closing its account previous year. National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar has said investigators will also question the newspaper about the confidential banking documents.
“The PAC can assist the task force by giving them support”, he said.
On the contrary he said this would illustrate the fact that the prime minister’s leadership, character and personality conform to the principles of democracy. 1MDB is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ministry, overseen by Prime Minister and Finance Minister Najib Razak.
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In a report last Friday, the WSJ claimed that a money trail showed that US$700 million was moved between government agencies, banks and companies before it ended up in Najib’s personal accounts. This includes investments with PetroSaudi. The contents of the report, which is due to be completed by the end of 2015, weren’t made public.
