Fong Chan Onn: Clueless or Not Truthful?

Together with Nurul Izzah Anwar, MP for Lembah Pantai, we have exposed in our press conference last Tuesday that 45.9MW or 32.4% of the allocation to supply solar power has gone to 12 companies owned by Suzi Suliana bt Mohd Sidek and her husband, Todd Michael Morath, as well as 2 business partners.  Their ownership is hidden via a complex layer of holding companies and joint ventures.  Suzi Suliana happens to be the daughter of Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan, the recently retired Chief Secretary to the Government, and newly appointed chairman of Petronas Bhd.

Their combined allocation is much larger than established companies of Cypark and Petronas Power which received 9.2% and 7.1% of the allocation respectively.

SEDA Chairman Tan Sri Dr Fong Chan Onn had insisted that “the selection was above board as it was done through an online system”.  More specifically, Tan Sri Dr Fong explained that “the companies had met all the necessary technical criteria as well as financial commitments”.

However, I had further highlighted the fact that at least 8 out of 12 companies successful companies were set up on 11 November 2011, exactly 3 weeks before the 2nd December 2011 application deadline.  The rest of the companies were all set up less than 6 months before the deadline. 

What is worse is the fact that 9 of the above companies had paid up capital of only RM100 each!   Hence the obvious question to ask SEDA and its honourable chairman is, how is it that brand new companies with only RM100 paid up capital had met “all the necessary technical criteria as well as financial commitments”?

Instead of disclosing how these technical criteria and financial commitments were met, Tan Sri Dr Fong Chan Onn had threatened to sue me for defamation.

He further added, "the lawyers are looking into it. I mean if you have a company, you registered yesterday and apply today, I can't reject (your application) right?"

Based on the above reply, I am only more certain than ever that he is either completely clueless or is not telling the truth to the public.

The 18-page Feed-in Approval Application Form (Solar PV >72kWp) specifically requires a “site use agreement” for the proposed site to farm the solar energy (Page 2).

In addition, the application requires very specific financing compliance, that is either in the form of “conditional letter(s) of approval from the entity(ies) who will be providing financing to the Applicant for the project” or a “bank account statement showing a credit balance of at least the total capital cost of the renewable energy installation”.  In addition, even if the project is to be financed, “the Applicant’s bank account statement showing a credit balance of at least 20% of the total capital cost of the renewable energy installation.”

Can a company which is freshly set up only 3 weeks before the application deadline meet the above fairly onerous requirements?  What’s more for a company which is only set up a day before the deadline as clarified by Tan Sri Dr Fong.

What is worse is the fact that we are not talking about 1 company securing a small allocation of say, 1MW.  What we are seeing here is the fact that the Feed-in Approval Holders have been awarded to 12 different newly set up companies with no track record and no employees, belonging to the same set of shareholders, taking up 32.4% of the solar energy quota.  Of course, it is a mere coincidence that the key shareholder happens to be the daughter of our recently retired Chief Secretary to the Government and newly appointed Petronas Chairman, Tan Sri Sidek Hassan.

Regardless of whether Tan Sri Dr Fong Chan Onn or SEDA decides to proceed with the legal suit against me, they both owe an honest explanation to Malaysians as to how these companies were “successful” with their applications, while many other qualified companies were not even able to secure a single license. - tonypuablog