PKR says NFC asset freeze not enough, wants full audit

By Yow Hong Chieh

January 14, 2012

ALOR STAR, Jan 14 — PKR welcomed Putrajaya’s move to freeze the National Feedlot Corporation’s (NFC) assets but stressed it would continue to push for a full audit by an administrator on the scandal-hit company’s books.

Party strategic director Rafizi Ramli said this was because freezing assets alone would not allow the full extent of the publicly-funded cattle scheme’s alleged financial abuse to be known.

“We still want an administrator to go in and conduct a full audit,” he told The Malaysian Insider on the sidelines of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) convention here.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak disclosed today that the NFC’s assets had been frozen for the time being, according to Bernama Online.

He also said he had instructed Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry Minister Datuk Seri Noh Omar to study how best to resolve the NFC issue.

Rafizi also said Najib would also have to reveal how he intended to recover NFC funds allegedly transferred to overseas private companies owned by federal minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil and her family.

Shahrizat’s husband, Datuk Mohamad Salleh Ismail, runs the NFC.

“We would have to wait for the details as to how and under what law Najib is going to recover all these assets,” Rafizi said.

He added that Najib and Muhyiddin could not push all blame to Shahrizat as they too were responsible for awarding the project to her family in the first place.

“Najib and Muhyiddin cannot wash their hands (of this project)... It was because of their oversight and negligence that all these monies were misappropriated and transferred out in the first place,” he said.

The NFC issue came to light when the 2010 Auditor-General’s Report pointed out that the corporation had badly failed to meet production targets.

Shahrizat applied for three weeks’ leave from her duties, starting yesterday, after new allegations of bribery surfaced recently involving the RM250 million NFC project.