The affidavit was filed by Opus Consultants, whose report to the government in 2018 was cited by transport minister Wee Ka Siong last August when announcing the cancellation of the contract.

Wee said the project was overpriced by over RM1 billion and that the government had decided to reopen the bidding process. The decision led to project contractor Dhaya Maju-LTAT taking Wee and the federal government to court.

According to the Opus affidavit, company director Chan Tuck Leong was approached in August 2018 by the transport minister, then Loke Siew Fook, to review the KVDT2 project, based on publicly available information and a breakdown of the costs provided by the transport ministry.

According to the affidavit, “one of the objectives of the Opus report was to conduct a cost appraisal based on cost data from the Ipoh-Padang Besar double tracking project, supplemented with updated cost data from market sources”.

The cost data from the Ipoh-Padang Besar project was 11 years old.

According to the affidavit, the Opus report was submitted later the same month with several disclaimers, that it was prepared at the ministry’s request, could not be relied on by a third party, was based on limited information and was not a substitute for independent investigations.