'Anwar told bank CEO to transfer millions'

A bank chief executive officer (CEO) had confessed to the Anti-Corruption  Agency (ACA) in 1999 that Anwar Ibrahim had instructed him to channel millions of ringgit into the accounts of individuals and companies, according to New Straits Times.

In a front-page exclusive report today, the English-language daily quoted sources as saying that the ACA (now the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, MACC) had discovered the evidence when investigating alleged corruption and abuse of power by Anwar when he was the deputy premier and finance minister.

However, the ACA could not offer the CEO as a witness because the instructions to transfer funds were largely verbal and without a paper trail, said the sources quoted in the report.

Instead the ACA recommended that the Securities Commission should pursue action against companies found to have breached the Companies Act and the Securities Commission Act. However, it is not known if this was pursued. 

The daily also claimed that investigators wrapped up the probe in late 2000 after a year.

The probe was initiated at the height of the Reformasi movement after then Bank Negara assistant governor Abdul Murad Khalid alleged in a statutory declaration that Anwar, during his tenure as deputy premier, had some 20 master accounts containing RM3 billion in assets, shares and cash.

According to the sources quoted, that ACA had roped in Bank Negara's investigators and initiated investigations. One of these was into a master account, ‘related to some RM3 billion’, which was opened in the British Virgin Islands.

The daily reported that investigators had also inspected subsidiary accounts, as well as several companies and individuals that the ACA believed had money trails that could lead to Anwar.
 
However, the sources claimed that the investigations hit a snag due to the absence of a paper trail including documented transaction instructions and origin.

Funds channelled from companies to implicated individuals were justified as donations, which legalised the transaction, and the ACA could not establish the origin of the RM3 billion, said the sources.

Another obstacle faced by the investigators, according to the sources, was the lack of cooperation from foreign governments, including those in a neighbouring country.

MACC policy

In a related development, former ACA director-general Ahmad Zaki Husin told New Straits Times that he had supervised investigations into the case, which was based on Murad's statutory declaration.

However, he could not reveal more as he was bound by the oath of secrecy he had sworn when he assumed office.

MACC investigations director Mustafar Ali said the commission may reopen the case if new and significant evidence emerges.

The commission’s policy is that cases will not be reopened once they are closed by deputy public prosecutors, he added.