Ramkarpal Comes To Defence Of Tommy Thomas

(FMT) – DAP’s Ramkarpal Singh today defended former attorney-general Tommy Thomas’s decision to unfreeze an account of a business tycoon involving alleged illicit funds received from former prime minister Najib Razak.

The Bukit Gelugor MP said Thomas made the decision to lift the freeze on the business tycoon after the latter had made an agreement with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to return the funds received from Najib to the government.

In a statement, Ramkarpal said the tycoon agreed to return a sum of RM330,384, which was the sum equivalent to the illicit proceeds received from Najib in relation to the SRC International case.

He said this was based on the letter written by Thomas to former finance minister Lim Guan Eng, in explaining the decision to unfreeze the tycoon’s account.

“It is clear the former AG acted professionally and without undue influence from any quarter as can be seen from his letter dated June 14, 2019, in which Thomas offered his reasons behind his decision to lift all freezing orders on the bank accounts of a business tycoon.”

Ramkarpal said Thomas had made it clear in the letter that the agreement between the tycoon and MACC must be respected.

“In other words, according to the former AG, he acted on the said agreement that was reached between the said tycoon and MACC, and no one else, which he was perfectly entitled to do,” he said.

As such, Ramkarpal, a lawyer, said the complaint by Penang PAS to the MACC claiming Lim had abused his power was “clearly baseless”.

Yesterday, Penang PAS Youth deputy chief Abdul Razib Abdul Rahim lodged a report asking MACC to investigate any impropriety in the issue.

Razib had said MACC should investigate why the tycoon’s account was unfrozen when the latter owed the government RM4 million.

Najib, faces charges of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering involving RM42 million that allegedly came from SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB.