Ex-BNM chief took the fall for others, says Nur Jazlan

Nur Jazlan says his father-in-law, the late Jaffar Hussein's sense of responsibility is rare even in today's government.

PETALING JAYA: After more than two decades, the truth about a former Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor’s resignation, is finally out, Nur Jazlan Mohamed said.

“He resigned on April Fool’s Day in 1994, to cover the faults of others,” the deputy home minister tweeted today.

Nur Jazlan is the son-in-law of the late Jaffar Hussein, the central bank’s governor from 1985 to 1994 who passed away in 1998, just four years after his resignation.

His remarks came following a recent revelation by Abdul Murad Khalid, a former assistant governor at BNM, who claimed that the central bank lost billions of dollars in foreign currency trading in the early 1990s when Dr Mahathir Mohamad was prime minister.

He alleged that the foreign exchange losses were far higher than reported and were in US dollars, but there was no investigation to find out who was responsible.

Nur Jazlan also posted a tweet showing a clipping of the New Straits Times’ (NST) interview with Murad, headlined, “US$10b (billion) bombshell”. Next to this was another front-page clipping featuring Jaffar.

The latter was of an Utusan Malaysia article in 1994, with a headline which translates to “I made a mistake – Governor”, and the article summary stating “Bank Negara lost RM5.7 billion last year”.

“My father-in-law’s resignation to take responsibility for someone else’s mistake is rare in politics and government in Malaysia even today.

“Such misdeeds are usually brushed over for unity and stability’s sake to preserve the present order until exposed years later for expediency,” Nur Jazlan said.

Speaking to FMT, the former Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman said he didn’t know the whole story.

But Murad’s statement, he said, implied that a certain someone was the one who was actually responsible for the scandal that made national headlines back in the early 1990s.

“And my late father-in-law’s face was in the Utusan report, implying as if he was the person at fault and not just taking responsibility as the boss of Bank Negara at the time.”

Nur Jazlan didn’t elaborate further on how he made his conclusion.

Murad’s disclosures also came on the heels of reports that recently declassified US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) documents had linked the Mahathir administration to some US$1 billion in losses.

These losses were the result of bad loans made by Bumiputera Malaysia Finance (BMF) in the 1980s, to several shady companies, including units of Hong Kong-based Carrian Holdings Ltd. -FMT