Azeez said the money was collected by YTH from various sources, including corporate contributions, a special allocation by the government and from Umno.
“In 2017, YTH only had RM7 million. Since we received many requests to fund our programmes, we decided to use money from other sources, including Umno, corporate companies and a federal government contribution.
“I have stated before that this is not a secret programme, and we didn’t use money from depositors as alleged by netizens,” the Baling MP and Umno supreme council member told a news conference at Parliament building.
Azeez said he was disappointed with the action of the new TH management which did not use the proper standard operating procedure (SOP) to clear up the confusion and also did not give him the opportunity to explain the actual situation.
“TH never called me to defend myself. All the money received was deposited into the YTH account by Umno, the federal government and contributing companies. I am sure there are records (of the deposits).
“I can’t understand why TH did not use the existing SOP. Even though I am a former chairman of TH, it would have been more proper to call me beforehand and ask how the money was distributed. But, suddenly last Saturday, everything came out in the press,” he said.
He said that with the RM22 million, TH was able to arrange visits to more than 60 parliamentary constituencies to help individuals in need under programmes such as the “Ziarah Kasih Ramadhan” and others.
“We also visited constituencies that Umno had never won, such as the Batu parliamentary constituency. The programme was truly carried out to assist the people, regardless of political ideology,” he added.
Azeez said he was ready to cooperate if the police called him up to give a statement following the reports made against him.
“I believe the police will carry out their investigation transparently and scrupulously,” he said.
YTH was established in 2016 to implement, among others, humanitarian aid and contributions to the poor, less privileged and the needy. TH allocated RM7 million for the programme.
Last week, TH filed two reports with the police, one of which named Azeez, former TH chief executive officers Ismee Ismail and Johan Abdullah and chief financial officer Rozaida Omar who were trustees of YTH at the time of the alleged incident.
TH said the reports were the outcome of an internal investigation of previous transactions by the new management which took over the board in July this year.
The second report named Ismee, legal adviser Hazlina Mohd Khalid and senior general manager of corporate services and real estate Rifina Md Ariff in relation to a 2012 land matter.
TH alleged in the report there were “misrepresentations and withholding of material information” on TH’s disposal of its shares in an Indonesian plantation firm in 2012.