The Petaling Jaya Utara MP said this was obvious from the latest remark by Irwan, who is also Bandar Malaysia chairman, at an event yesterday when he refused to provide details on the status of Bandar Malaysia. “Wait, the time will come,” he reportedly told the media.
Pua said this was no different to what the finance ministry’s top civil servant also told business publication The Malaysian Reserve, on Oct 31 that the announcement for the master developer would be “coming soon, coming soon”.
“We call upon Irwan to confirm if in fact no firm bids were tabled by any so-called Fortune 500 company to acquire and develop Bandar Malaysia, especially not at the astronomical price demanded by the finance ministry.”
The DAP national publicity secretary also reminded Irwan this was not the first time he had brought up the matter in recent weeks.
“On Nov 8, I had asked the finance minister in the Dewan Rakyat to state how many companies had submitted finalised proposals for the re-tender of the Bandar Malaysia project, how many of those companies were Fortune 500 companies and when the tender decision would be announced.
“The finance minister just restated information which was already made known to the press for months, and that the RFP (request for proposal) process had been completed, and listed out the same criteria that had been said before.
“He added that eight companies had met these criteria and that a final decision will be announced soon,” he said.
Bandar Malaysia site visit
The finance ministry launched a RFP on July 5, with a deadline of July 20.
Irwan had then given an update in August that six companies showed interest and had even visited the Bandar Malaysia project site.
“However, it has now become quite obvious that since June this year, the only progress we have made is purportedly six to eight companies have ‘expressed interest’ in Bandar Malaysia despite a decision which was to be ‘made by July 14’,” Pua said.
The Bandar Malaysia project, owned by 1MDB, was originally awarded to China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC) and its Malaysian partner, IWH, in December 2015 in a RM7.4 billion deal which some quarters claimed was to help raise funds to tackle 1MDB’s massive debt burden.
However, on May 3 this year, TRX City Sdn Bhd which comes under the finance ministry, announced that the share sale agreement with Beijing’s CREC and IWH regarding the sale of 60% of Bandar Malaysia’s issued and paid-up capital had lapsed and was, therefore, terminated.
It said this was due to the failure of the purchasing parties to fulfil payment obligations. But the joint venture disputed the termination, calling it “unacceptable”.
Bandar Malaysia’s RFP exercise was open only to Fortune 500 companies with a combined revenue of RM50 billion or more in the past three years.
The strong interest in the project was largely because it will house the terminus for the multibillion-dollar high-speed rail (HSR) project to connect Kuala Lumpur with Singapore.