Why not ask Guan Eng to explain land purchase, Najib tells MRB chief

Former prime minister Najib Razak.

PETALING JAYA: Former prime minister Najib Razak today questioned why Malaysian Rubber Board (MRB) chairman Sankara Nair did not ask Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng for an explanation on the purchase of thousands of acres of land, said to have caused MRB close to RM800 million in losses.

Nair had earlier taken the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) to task following its statement that it had done nothing wrong in its 2010 purchase of 2,800 acres of land in Sungai Buloh.

In a Facebook post, Najib continued to defend the land sale, saying the EPF had made huge profits after purchasing the land at RM2.28 billion, as its gross development value was at least RM50 billion.

He said he had explained and proven several times that Aset Tanah Nasional Bhd (ATNB), which sold the land to EPF, was a wholly-owned company under the finance ministry, and that MRB, wholly owned by the government, had sold the land to ATNB which then sold it to EPF.

“There was not one crony in this land sale except for the cronies in EPF, the contributors.

“But the chairman still insists that RM800 million has gone missing. Why is he afraid to ask Guan Eng and claim back the RM800 million, if he is still not convinced and insists that MRB suffered losses as the land was sold below market price?” he said in his post.

This morning, Nair said he had “concrete evidence”, including pictures and documents, showing that the EPF knew about the sale of land in Sungai Buloh for RM1.5 billion, below its market price of about RM2.3 billion.

“With this evidence, EPF’s assertion of being ignorant (over the sale) debunks their explanation,” he said.

The matter surfaced on Jan 4, when Primary Industries Minister Teresa Kok claimed that MRB had, in 2010, sold a 2,800-acre plot of land in Sungai Buloh to ATNB, a special purpose vehicle of the finance ministry, for RM1.5 billion.

ATNB sold 2,330 acres of the land to EPF-owned Kwasa Land Sdn Bhd for RM2.28 billion.

However, EPF denied knowledge of the arrangements between MRB and ATNB when purchasing the land from ATNB. - FMT