Anwar questions RCI on BNM forex losses

PH de facto leader asks why focus is on draft audit report when it is standard procedure to only consider the final report signed off by the auditor-general.

PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Harapan de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim today posed a question to the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) that is probing the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) foreign exchange (forex) losses suffered in the 1990s.

In a statement today, Anwar said he was particularly troubled by the line of questioning chairman of the commission, Mohd Sidek Hassan, appeared to be focusing.

He said Sidek was “harping” on the initial figures for the forex losses in the draft audit report by the auditor-general which was brought to his attention at the time and which he had referred back to BNM for its views.

“The chairman ought to know that it is standard cabinet practice to only consider and discuss the final report signed off by the auditor-general, which I had duly presented.

“The cabinet does not discuss draft reports and auditees’ responses which are still in the process of being discussed with the auditee, as was in that case.

“I presented the final report to the cabinet after the auditor-general had signed off on it, as I was duty bound to do,” he said.

Likewise, he said, his statements to Parliament were based on the contents of the final reports signed off by the auditor-general and the BNM governor, and on briefings by officials on the reports.

“It would have been completely unreasonable for me to challenge the agreed findings of the then auditor-general and BNM’s internal auditors, or to expect me to have done so.

“Sidek’s harping on the draft report by the auditor-general raises questions as to whether this commission, or at least its chairman, had a preconceived version of the facts to present in their report. I hope that this is not the case,” he said.

Anwar, who was finance minister in Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s cabinet in the 1990s, is currently serving a five-year jail sentence at the Sungai Buloh prison.

He testified at the RCI proceedings on Sept 7, saying the amount of RM5.7 billion that he presented to the cabinet in 1993 was based on BNM’s annual audited financial report.

The report was finalised after a discussion between BNM and then auditor-general Ishak Tadin, he added.

“To say they (then cabinet members) didn’t know about the losses… that’s not true,” he said.

This was after Sidek accused Anwar of failing to reveal that BNM was making losses from its forex trading.

In his statement today, Anwar said Sidek ought to have known that Donald Lim Siang Chai, who was deputy finance minister at the time, had when answering in Parliament on Sept 24, 2012, affirmed that the forex losses for 1993 were RM5.7 billion as Anwar had announced in 1994.

“He did not deem fit to revisit those figures despite BNM having done its audit of 2007. It was not an issue then.

“As a minister reporting to Parliament, quite properly, he stuck to the version signed off by the auditor-general.”

Anwar said he was also troubled that the RCI seemed uninterested in why Nor Mohamed Yakcop, who was asked to resign as a BNM adviser in 1994 over the forex losses, was appointed by former prime minister Abdullah Badawi as finance minister in 2004.

“Surely the public would wish to know what interest Abdullah and his family had in pursuing such an inappropriate appointment,” he said.

He also reiterated queries as to the timing of the RCI, asking why it was being carried out only 14 years after Mahathir left the government in 2003.

“While I agreed to cooperate fully with the inquiry, it ought to have taken place much earlier.

“Why is it being done 14 years later? Is it because a desperate prime minister and cabinet now face his (Mahathir’s) and my trenchant criticism?

“The members of the commission must remain mindful of this current context in which they are asked to do their work,” he said. -FMT