Mara building scandal - MACC says ready to haul several parties to court

 

The Attorney-General's Chambers has agreed in principle to charge several parties who were involved in the scandal surrounding the sale of property in Melbourne to Mara Incorporated Sdn Bhd (Mara Inc).

MACC chief commissioner Azam Baki said the graftbusters were currently waiting for the right time to file the charges.

He assured the public that there would be no protection given to the suspects.

"The deputy public prosecutor has agreed in principle to charge several parties, it's just that for now, we are waiting for the right time.

"One of them (a suspect) is maybe in Sabah and under quarantine, so we have to set the time. In this case, we will not protect anyone. We are firm. Just wait for the right time," he said in an interview with the agency's radio station MACC.fm today.

Last month, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Boon Lye Teen, also known as Dennis Teen, had been charged in Australia on July 9 with bribing a foreign official and also with four counts of false accounts related to the sale in 2013 of a student accommodation block called Dudley House in Melbourne to Mara Incorporated Sdn Bhd.

Teen, 68, said to be a Malaysian domiciled in Australia, had been charged with bribing a foreign public official on March 8, 2013, in Vermont South, Melbourne.

The charges came five years after an investigation by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald which revealed that the price of the property had allegedly been inflated by AU$4.75 million (RM14.25 million) to provide kickbacks to a group of Malaysian officials.

According to the court documents filed at the Melbourne Magistrates Court, it was alleged that the agreed sale price for the property was AU$17.85 million (RM53.55 million) but it was later sold for AU$22.6 million (RM67.8 million), with US$4.75 million (RM14.25 million) paid to Malaysian officials.

Seputeh MP Teresa Kok had called on the MACC to take the cue from the Australian investigators who named two “middlemen” identified as Zach Zainal and Erwan Azizi as having received the RM14.25 million to be used as bribes to influence a Malaysian public official to obtain or retain business, namely in the sale of a residential apartment complex.

She called on Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to back up his anti-corruption stance with action and urged the MACC to probe the matter.

On March 18, 2016, it was reported that then Mara chairperson Annuar Musa had delivered documents related to the property purchases to the MACC.

On Nov 30, 2017, then rural and regional development minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob was reported to have said MACC had almost completed the Mara property scandal probe and the MACC was waiting for a report from the Australian authorities regarding the transactions. - Mkini