This follows Prime Minister Najib Razak declaring in his New Year’s Eve message that the Royal Commission of Inquiry which held its hearing between Aug 21 and Sept 19 last year, was only called because DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang had called for it for a long time.
In the 524-page report tabled in the Dewan Rakyat on Nov 30, the RCI concluded that the BNM’s forex dealings from the late 1980s to 1993 were excessive and speculative for profit, and therefore contravened Section 31(a) of the Central Bank Ordinance 1958.
It also stated that former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad helped in “deliberately concealing” the losses from the cabinet and parliament.
“Lim, now an ally to Mahathir and a leading member of the PH coalition, had called for an inquiry into the matter in 1993 and today finds himself in the awkward position of having to downplay his past opposition to the former prime minister who had once jailed him on internal security grounds,” the portal reported in a commentary.
Comparisons have been drawn between the issues surrounding 1MDB and the BNM forex trading losses in terms of the large amounts involved, and this was not lost on the Gelang Patah MP, who released a statement following the release of the RCI report.
“RCI is exhuming an elephant’s carcass from Mahathir’s era, but why are we missing the elephant in the room,” Lim had said alluding to the 1MDB scandal.
However, Asia Times highlighted how despite the comparisons “Najib stands to gain from the sense of equivalency if it further divides the opposition coalition and upsets the uneasy alliance of long-time political foes brought together loosely in opposition to his continued rule.”
‘Then PM misled the cabinet’
In its report, the RCI had recommended that the police open investigations into possible criminal breach of trust (CBT) or cheating by various parties, including Mahathir, then finance minister Anwar Ibrahim, the BNM board of directors, finance ministry officials, BNM officials, and officials from the auditor-general’s office.
The report also said it was “definitive on the losses incurred by BNM due to forex dealings in 1992, 1993, and 1994, being a total of RM31.5 billion”.
“The commission is of the opinion that the then prime minister condoned the actions of the finance minister in deliberately concealing the information and misleading the cabinet,” the report said.
It said this was based on minutes of cabinet meetings and testimony from the then finance minister and Mahathir himself, which confirmed that the prime minister was aware of the losses because it was reported to him by the finance ministry and the treasury deputy secretary general.
The commission added that the act of concealing the magnitude of the losses was further compounded by shares being discreetly transferred to BNM to absorb losses through capital gain.
The RCI secretary Yusof Ismail had also lodged a police report the same day, saying it was to enable the police to probe criminal breach of trust, cheating and other offences.