“I read the report, it does not say anything that I have not said in the past, which remains valid.
“I am disappointed in hoping there was some revelation, some top secret stuff, but there was no revelation,” the DAP leader told reporters.
According to documents declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Malaysian government then headed by Mahathir had tried to delay investigations into the BMF scandal, while looking for a way to bail out the state-owned Bank Bumiputera.
But Lim said compared to 1MDB, the BMF scandal “is a small thing”.
He said unlike the 1MDB issue, the BMF scandal was debated in the Dewan Rakyat.
The CIA report among others said the government had justified the secrecy surrounding its investigation using the Banking Secrecy Laws, adding that “a year’s delay after the problems surfaced in effecting any management changes at BMF have made the government suspect”.
The report is among 13 million pages of CIA intelligence findings worldwide which were declassified last week.
Meanwhile, DAP vice-chairman Senator Dr Ariffin Omar said there was nothing in the report to incriminate Mahathir.
“They only said Mahathir’s administration is responsible,” he said.
This afternoon, Mahathir brushed aside the report and questioned the timing of its publication.
“The purpose is political, maybe some people will benefit from it. There are other reports which are different from the CIA report. Read those reports too,” he said.
The BMF scandal made the headlines in the early eighties, after it was revealed that the bank’s Hong Kong-based subsidiary had provided “bad” loans to several shady companies, including units of Carrian Holdings Ltd, a conglomerate led by George Tan.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were lost overnight when the Carrian group collapsed in 1983, in Hong Kong’s largest bankruptcy.
Those responsible were charged in courts both in Malaysia and Hong Kong.
BMF chairman Lorrain Esme Osman lived in exile until his death in London in 2011.