His political secretary, Wong Hon Wai, said this was because Lim would be making an official visit to Hainan, China, this week.

“I will accompany the chief minister for an official visit to Hainan this week. Lim will be available to record his statement, if need be, next week,” he said in a statement today.

Wong said Lim had urged MACC to speed up investigations on his 2015 bungalow purchase so that he could prove his administration was clean.

“The chief minister will provide full cooperation in the MACC investigation and has asked for investigations to be speeded up to prove that the corruption allegations are false and baseless.

“The allegations are part of a political attack and ‘character assassination’ levelled against him.”

Wong said Lim had also urged MACC to reveal the outcome of its investigations against him when he first rented the bungalow in Pinhorn Road back in 2009.

“I have been instructed to refer to a Penang MACC statement that the agency had investigated the chief minister after he started renting the bungalow in 2009, before he purchased it in 2015.”

Tasek Gelugor MP Shabudin Yahaya has alleged that Lim’s house purchase is linked to the sale of state land to a private developer to build a specialist hospital. Lim has denied this.

Today, Penang Umno Youth lodged a report to the MACC over Lim’s RM2.8 million purchase of his bungalow.