At long last, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the mother of all scandals, the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ), has been tabled in Parliament, together with several tombs of documents, viz verbatim minutes of 13 PAC meetings on the subject from 11th June to 3rd September 2009, Price Waterhouse Coopers’ report on position review of PKFZ and its appendices.
The PAC report has confirmed and vindicated my statements and allegations about the PKFZ not only as “a can of worms” but a “swamp of crocodiles” that I have made in Parliament since the last session, and raises the question why no action had been taken very much earlier to avoid the rotten state of the PKFZ scandal today.
The PAC report has confirmed that RM645.87 million would have been saved if the PKFZ land had been acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1960, for then it would have cost only RM442.13 million and not RM1.088 billion before interest.
PAC recommended that former Transport Minister Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy be investigated by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Police for unlawfully issuing three Letters of Support which has landed the country with the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal, citing the offence of criminal breach of trust under Section 14(1) of the Financial Procedure Act 1957 read together with Section 409B Penal Code.
I commend PAC for taking such a clear stand but I cannot wonder what is the use of such a reference to the MACC, when the MACC and previously the Anti-Corruption Agency had been aware of these facts as I had spoken about them many times in Parliament in the past three years.
This is from the verbatim report of the PAC meeting of 23rd June 2009 in the exchange between PAC member and DAP MP for Petaling Jaya Utara Tony Pua and the MACC Director of Investigations Datuk Haji Mohd Shukri bin Abdull:
Pua Kiam Wee : Akan tetapi, sebelum ini, sebelum 2007 pun isu-isu salah guna kuasa telah pun dikemukakan dengan jelas terutamanya mengenai isu letter of support yang telah ditandatangani oleh pihak Menteri pada masa itu telah pun jelas dan telah pun diakui oleh ramai termasuk pihak-pihak daripada kerajaan bahawa seseorang Menteri Pengangkutan tidak mempunyai kuasa untuk memberikan apa-apa jaminan kewangan kepada pihak sesiapa dan apakah tindakan yang diambil pada masa itu? Kenapa pada masa itu tiada siasatan diambil untuk menyiasat sekiranya ada unsur-unsur salah guna kuasa. Sekurang-kurangnya salah guna kuasa dan boleh jadi isu penyelewengan pada masa itu.
Datuk Haji Mohd Shukri bin Abdull : Okey, Tuan Pengerusi dan Yang Berhormat, Letter of Support yang dikatakan dikeluarkan oleh Menteri kepada OSK untuk pinjam kepada Kuala Dimensi juga merupakan salah satu isu yang kita siasat dan kita complete siasatan itu dan Timbalan Pendakwa Raya berpendapat bahawa tiada kesalahan salah guna kuasa berlaku. Itu pendapat yang dikeluarkan oleh Timbalan Pendakwa Raya. Itu satu isu yang kita siasat Tuan Pengerusi.
From the above verbatim record, it is crystal clear that the fact of Chan Kong Choy having abused his powers as Transport Minister and committed breach of trust in unlawfully issuing the three letters of support were not new information to the MACC, as it had investigated them and found that no offence had been committed.
What purpose can be served by PAC recommending that SPRM should further investigate into Chan Kong Choy for the offence of criminal breach of trust when it had already investigated and cleared him of having committed any such offence?
What is urgently needed is a Royal Commission of Inquiry to build on the PAC findings as well as to investigate why the MACC, the Attorney-General and other key institutions and important officials had failed to discharge their duties in allowing the PKFZ scandal to reach the present astronomical scale.
Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail had appeared before the PAC to reiterate that Chan had unlawfully given an implicit government guarantee in the three Letters of Support which he had no power to give as Transport Minister. The question is why the Attorney-General had failed to take action against Chan for abuse of power or criminal breach of trust in illegally issuing three Letters of Support landing the country with the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal.
Gani Patail should resign as Attorney-General if he cannot give a satisfactory explanation.
Parliament should have a special debate on the PAC report on the PKFZ scandal, but the first step is for MPs to go through the tomb of PKFZ documents tabled in Parliament today.
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