BN STARTS TO SHAKE: Mere denials don't help, MCA Youth tells 1MDB

MCA Youth has urged 1MDB to provide detailed information and clarification in order to clear the air on the latest allegations contained in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) news report.

"Information contained in the WSJ article is indeed very serious. When a world-renowned international publication releases such details in its report, 1MDB should not just release a simple one-off statement denying the allegations.

"Providing detailed information and clarification will do more damage control and clear the air while alleviating public rumblings, rather than denials which appear standard and do not fully help in assuaging public suspicion," MCA Youth chief Chong Sing Woon said in a statement today.

On the same note, he also urged WSJ to furnish empirical evidence of the reports while urging 1MDB, the funds of which were allegedly channelled into Najib's private coffers, to issue more than simple denials on the issue.

Chong Sin Woon

The WSJ report quoting unnamed Malaysian investigators claimed that US$700 million of 1MDB funds were channelled into bank accounts believed to belong to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

While 1MBD has denied the report, the Prime Minister's Office said this was a continuation of the attempt to politically sabotage Najib.

Articles were questionable

Meanwhile, Sabah State Assembly Speaker Salleh Said Keruak said the WSJ and Sarawak Report articles were questionable, as the veracity of previous reports on 1MDB, citing leaked documents, have yet to be verified.

In the meantime, Salleh said, there was no need to get excited as the expose might turn out to be another washout.

"I am not going to get too excited just yet at this so-called latest revelation because this has happened before and in the end, we discover that it is a dud ‘bomb’.

"We do not really know which 'investigators' or 'Malaysian investigators' the Sarawak Report and Wall Street Journal are referring to and whether, in the first place, this report is accurate," he wrote in his blog today.

Salleh then shared how, in 1999, a list of bank account details allegedly belonging to former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, their families and close associates had been revealed.

"On further checking, however, not only did these bank accounts not exist but the Israeli bank that was named was fictitious as well. So even the bank does not exist," he said. - M'kini