KUALA LUMPUR, March 5 — DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng today questioned Johor Umno deputy chief Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed’s logic on bringing in Datuk Seri Najib Razak to campaign on behalf of MCA candidates in Johor.
In a statement, the Bagan MP asked if Nur Jazlan had forgotten about Najib’s part in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal in which he has been convicted by both the High Court and the Court of Appeal.
“Najib continues to whitewash the truth and revise history by making the outrageous claim in Parliament on March 2 that not a single cent of the principal amount of the 1MDB debt has been paid using public funds and even claimed that the RM23 billion recovered from Goldman Sachs, the US Department of Justice, AmBank and various auditors are sufficient to repay the 1MDB debts.
“According to the Finance Ministry, RM19.14 billion has been recovered so far and placed in the asset recovery trust account, not RM23 billion as claimed by Najib,” he said.
Lim said that the Johor state polls voting day on March 12 would be the deciding factor to see if Najib and Jazlan have successfully hoodwinked voters into thinking that corruption is no longer an issue, thus allowing the Barisan Nasional (BN) government to continue to abuse their power.
On March 2, Najib argued in Parliament that not a single sen of public funds has been used by the government to repay the principal amount of 1MDB debts.
He said this is because various entities, including Goldman Sachs, audit firms KPMG and Deloitte, AmBank and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had returned 1MDB funds totalling RM23 billion to Malaysia.
Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz yesterday called Najib’s claims “baseless” saying that the federal government will begin servicing the principal debt once the bonds issued by the sovereign fund and its subsidiaries mature, at least two of them by May this year. The debt servicing will continue to be paid until 2039.
Lim also previously said the government has already repaid RM13.3 billion of 1MDB’s debt so far.
He then reiterated yesterday again that not a single sen from taxpayers was used by the government to repay the principal amount of 1MDB debt, despite being disputed by the current and former finance ministers.
Najib said that part of the loan had instead been paid by selling 1MDB’s own assets, which included independent power producer (IPP) companies worth RM10 billion and a plot of land in Penang worth RM2.6 billion.
On March 3, Damansara MP Tony Pua in his parliamentary motion to refer Najib to the House Committee of Privileges for lying to Parliament.
He claimed that Najib is only continuing to make a fool of himself by pleading his 1MDB case in Parliament and trying to shift the blame to the subsequent governments.