He said the new evidence included the recent settlement of a dispute between 1MDB and International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) as well as information contained in the US Department of Justice suit to seize US$1 billion worth of assets allegedly bought with funds originating from 1MDB.
In a statement today, the DAP national publicity secretary said he was not trying to drive a wedge between Prime Minister Najib Razak and Second Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani, as alleged by the latter.
Johari had told Malaysiakini: “I never contradicted the prime minister (on the 1MDB issue). Don’t try to split me and the prime minister with this matter.”
Commenting on this, Pua said: “I never accused him of ‘contradicting’ the prime minister. I merely repeated what he had said earlier, which was ‘the prime minister has made the decision for the country. That’s it,’ and that the matter is now ‘beyond [him]’.
“His own statement clearly showed that while he had all along said that the dispute between 1MDB and IPIC should go to arbitration and that he was ‘very confident’ of the Malaysian parties winning the case, he had to wash his hands off the matter as the matter has been decided by the prime minister.”
Pua said Johari appeared to have forgotten that while he reported to the prime minister in the Cabinet, he was there to serve the interest of Malaysians and not that of the prime minister.
“If the decision of the prime minister is clearly detrimental to the interest of Malaysians, as the settlement showed, then it is certainly the duty of a finance minister to make things right.”
Pua said the 1MDB-IPIC settlement had in effect shifted the burden of repaying 1MDB’s US$3.5 billion bond to the finance ministry, despite repeated assertions by 1MDB and Johari himself that 1MDB had already paid IPIC US$3.51 billion in the past.
This meant, he said, that Malaysians had to bear a whopping US$7.01 billion to resolve 1MDB’s US$3.5 billion bond borrowing before even taking into consideration the annual interest payments of approximately US$200 million.
Calling on Johari to access his conscience and determine the facts of the matter, Pua said: “If the Second Finance Minister is genuine in his desire to ‘serve the nation’ as professed in his March open letter to me, then I ask him to join me in calling for the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee to re-look into the 1MDB scandal in light of the latest developments.”