This, the DAP lawmaker explained, was because the state investment arm had failed to produce many documents the PAC had requested for in the course of its investigations.
Nevertheless the PAC report, Pua said, did reveal a lot of information which was previously unavailable. He also said that should 1MDB choose to release the documents after all, the committee would continue the probe.
“That is why I asked the prime minister to direct 1MDB to hand over all these missing documents. Or else, Najib would be further tainted with the perception that he is afraid of the truth, or of being discovered that he has much to hide.”
Pua, who is a PAC member, said although the report did not explicitly implicate the Prime Minister in any wrongdoing when it came to 1MDB’s management, Najib – who is also the Finance Minister – must still be held accountable.
“Whether he is directly involved depends on the transactions. Which is why we needed to call Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) for questioning.
“We needed the documents from BNM but maybe 1MDB did not want Najib to be implicated, so they chose not to hand over the documents.
“In fact, in nearly every session towards the end of the probe, we kept pressing the Finance Ministry officials present about the whereabouts of the documents and each time, they couldn’t provide an answer.”
Pua explained he only agreed to the committee’s probe being presented to the Dewan Rakyat this month simply because he did not want to run the risk of the report not seeing the light of day.
“If we wait for the next session, it might not be tabled at all.
“I also agreed for the report to be tabled first so that at least the public could see all the information we have gathered. As for the rest of it, we will settle it later.”
When asked about the statement by Tan Seng Giaw, a fellow DAP lawmaker and PAC member, that Najib was not to be held responsible for 1MDB’s dealings, Pua explained that Tan said this based specifically on the 1MDB documents that PAC had in hand.
“But it must be noted that there are a lot of documents which weren’t provided.”