Pua: Reveal all to show Arul Kanda not lying

The MP claims the 1MDB chief has continued attempts to protect guilty parties with lies and half-truths that will make him complicit in a scam.

KUALA LUMPUR: Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua called upon 1MDB chief Arul Kanda Kandasamy to make public all the company’s Board Meeting minutes, particularly for the meetings held after he was appointed the President of 1MDB. “This would prevent further untold surprises from turning up on whistleblower sites.”

“The 1MDB Board of Director’s Meeting minutes of 12 January 2015 proved that Arul Kanda repeatedly lied, not ‘miscommunicated’ as claimed.”

Hence, added Pua who is also DAP National Publicity Secretary, Arul Kanda cannot feign ignorance or claim innocent “miscommunication” or “misunderstanding” when he gave Singapore Business Times or the Parliament fictitious reasons or excuses for not repatriating funds back to Malaysia.

“The 1MDB President should stop telling more lies to cover up lies to cover up the multi-billion ringgit shenanigans in the state owned company,” warned Pua. “While embezzlement and misappropriation clearly took place before he became the President of the Company, his continued attempts to protect the guilty parties with lies and half-truths will make him complicit in the entire scam.”

Pua was commenting on Arul Kanda’s response to the latest exposé by Sarawak Report which published the minutes of the 1MDB Board of Director’s Meeting held on 12 January 2015. Arul Kanda had conceded that the minutes were genuine, not the usual response from 1MDB to previous exposes by the Sarawak Report.

Arul Kanda’s explanation on the January 12 minutes smacks of a very patchy cover up to the lies which have been told to the public and the Parliament, charged Pua.

Firstly, he said, the minutes revealed that “Arul Kanda updated the Board that the balance of USD939,874,085 had been redeemed and had been held as cash since 31 December 2014”.

However, Arul will do well to remember that in 1MDB’s email to Malaysiakini 11 January, he claimed that “the process to do so has already commenced, and we will make an announcement as soon as this has been completed”, reminded Pua. “How is it that the 1MDB President could inform the Board that the cash, or the mysterious ‘units’ for that matter, was already in the bank since 31 December, when he could only tell Malaysiakini that the redemption is in process but isn’t completed 11 days later?”

Secondly, he continued, even if the people were to give Arul Kanda the benefit of the doubt on the excuse of a “misunderstanding”, investment bankers will scratch their heads over his definition of investment “redemption”. “The financial community would understand the ‘redemption’ of an investment fund to be in the form of ‘cash’ or its underlying assets, e.g., shares of a particular company or titles to specific properties,” said Pua. “What in the world is redemption via ‘the sale of fund units’?”

If they are still in “fund units”, stressed Pua, it means that the investment fund hasn’t been redeemed. “If they have been redeemed, how could they still be in the form of undefined ‘fund units’ of indeterminate value?”

Finally, said Pua, the nail in the coffin to prove that Arul Kanda did indeed knowingly lie to both the press and the Parliament via the Minister of Finance was that he gave very specific reasons why these redeemed cash and/or ‘fund units’ were not repatriated to Malaysia.

Besides telling the Singapore Business Times on 9 February 2015 that “the cash is in our accounts and in US dollars. I can assure you (about that)… I have seen the statements”, recalled Pua, Arul Kanda also said that 1MDB was “keeping the money in US dollars as we have USD6.5 billion in bonds out there, in which interest payments come up to nearly USD400 million a year.”

The Finance Minister’s 10 March 2015 parliamentary reply to him further added that the reason for keeping the funds in Singapore was to avoid Bank Negara’s restrictions on funds leaving the country.

However, alleged Pua, the exposed minutes of meeting in January proves that the real unrevealed reason for failing to repatriate the money was because the proceeds from the Cayman Islands fund were already pledged, without prior knowledge of the Board of Directors, to Deutsche Bank for a USD975 million loan.

The minutes specifically noted that “Mr Arul said that he had had a discussion with DB on the possibility of repatriating the proceeds. DB advised that they were unable to accede, given recent negative reports on the Group, and their concern over the recoverability of the USD975 million loan granted,” said Pua.

Arul Kanda in confirming the minutes exposed by the Sarawak Report as genuine denied that he had lied to the Board of Directors.

The 1MDB chief said that based on his understanding of events that occurred before his time, the redemption of fund units happened in cash for an amount of USD940 million. However, upon further investigation and verification, it became clear that this was a misunderstanding, which he then clarified to the Board and its only shareholder, the Ministry of Finance. “This clarification was clearly recorded in subsequent Board minutes and can be verified,” said Arul Kanda.

On 13 January 2015, he confirmed via a press statement that the remaining amount of USD1.11 billion had been redeemed, in full.

What was unfortunately not made clear, he added, was that the redemption happened partly in cash and partly through the sale of fund units, with cash payment being deferred. “It is this important distinction which caused a misinterpretation of my statement, first during a Business Times interview on 9 February 2015 and subsequently by the Ministry of Finance, in a Parliamentary answer on 12 March 2015.” Arul Kanda claimed.