“His Majesty the Yang di-Pertuan Agong never signed my appointment as governor as is alleged,” Irwan said in an official statement today.
Irwan chided the foreign media for their attacks on Malaysia, calling their claims “outright lies with absolutely no basis”.
“I was never offered the post of governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, as The Wall Street Journal and Sarawak Report have repeatedly claimed.”
This comes in the wake of Muhammad Ibrahim’s appointment as the new governor, which was soon followed by a statement from the press secretary to Prime Minister Najib Razak pooh-poohing WSJ’s multiple claims in the past that Irwan would be the next governor.
“The Wall Street Journal’s lies and total disregard for the facts in its reporting on Malaysia have been proven again,” Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad had said yesterday.
WSJ had most recently in March reported that the Finance Ministry’s “top bureaucrat, Irwan Serigar Abdullah, was expected to be named as the new central bank head by the government in the coming week”.
“Mr Najib is chairman of 1MDB’s board of advisers that oversees the fund. Mr Irwan, as a senior ministry official, is a member of that board,” read the report.
WSJ publisher Dow Jones today responded to Tengku Sariffuddin’s comments, with a spokeswoman saying that the publisher “stands behind our fair and accurate reporting of this evolving story which has in no way been undermined by recent events”.