Tony Pua said this in a hard-hitting statement against the firm and the client for whom they had audited the accounts for 2013 and 2014, and signed off on March 28, 2014 and November 5, 2014 respectively.
“The firm helped mask the multi-billion dollar shenanigans which were taking place in the state-owned enterprise for the past few years.
“The evidence presented by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) clearly showed that Deloitte made a complete mess of 1MDB’s audit for the two financial years. The auditors were made complete fools by 1MDB’s executives who repeatedly embezzled billions of dollars from the company.
“They were hoodwinked, perhaps too readily, by fictitious documents and outrageous lies presented by the company’s management,” Pua said in a statement released today.
Pua was referring to a statement released by 1MDB last night, entitled “1MDB Audited Accounts & Auditor Update”, in which the investment firm announced “the 2013 and 2014 audited financial statements of 1MDB should no longer be relied on by any party, pending final and conclusive determination by a court of law of certain alleged facts, as described in the Complaint by the DoJ”.
“With the DoJ’s exposé, it has finally come to a stage where it is no longer tenable for Deloitte to standby the financial statements it audited for 2013 and 2014. Hence, 1MDB was forced into making this queer announcement to deny the veracity of its own financial report.
“Basically, Deloitte Malaysia has washed its hands off 1MDB while the new 1MDB Board of Directors failed its first test of integrity and accountability,” Pua said, referring to the 1MDB Board’s continued insistence that “no wrongdoing has been committed and that past audited financial statements continue to show a true and fair view of the company’s affairs”.
Going into details, Pua said Deloitte has failed to discover in its audit that 1MDB had made more than US$3.5 billion (RM14 billion) of payments over the course of 2012 to 2014 to a fraudulent Aabar Investment PJS Limited, incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
“Deloitte also found nothing suspicious in 1MDB Global Investment Limited’s US$1.56 billion investment in several dodgy and obscure investment funds, including the Devonshire Growth, Enterprise Emerging Markets and Cistenique investment funds.
“The US DoJ had determined that these funds had acted as conduits in the money laundering scam, including US$681 million which DoJ documents said had ended up in the accounts of Malaysian Official 1,” Pua said.
The Petaling Jaya Utara MP said the newly-appointed board of directors in 1MDB, led by Treasury Secretary-General Irwan Serigar is persisting with a massive cover up of the crimes which had taken place within 1MDB.
“It is now obvious that Tan Sri Irwan Serigar is only interested in carrying on the ‘stellar’ work of the previous board of directors who had resigned en mass in absolute disgrace in April.
“When the Treasury Secretary-General had testified before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee in June 2014, he had absolved himself from all blame by claiming that he had no control or supervisory powers over 1MDB.
“In fact, he blamed Clause 117 of 1MDB’s Memorandum and Articles of Association which granted all such powers directly to the Prime Minister,” Pua said referring to a clause that has since been abolished by the firm.