Sabah DAP to go public on quake donations received
Published on: Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Kota Kinabalu: DAP Sabah Chief Jimmy Wong has challenged his former deputy Fred Fung to take the present DAP state leaders to court to prove the allegation of misappropriation of election fund during the last 13th General Election.Questioning Fung's motive for continuously "picking on him" over the past two years and after he resigned from the party, Wong said as far as the demand by Fung for DAP Sabah and him to disclose the amount collected from its Mount Kinabalu Earthquake Relief Fund donation drive is concerned, "there was nothing to hide."Fung was reported as calling for DAP Sabah and Wong to come clean with the amount collected from public donations because he claimed to have witnessed a party official receiving RM180,000 in cash as election fund but this was not banked in to DAP Sabah's account.
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In a press conference Tuesday, Wong replied that the donation in the Public Bank account number 3195111817 for the Mount Kinabalu Earthquake Relief Fund stood at RM123,887."We were the first to spring into action providing assistance to the people in Ranau in urgent need of drinking water (after water supply was cut off by mud floods)," he said.Wong, who is also Kota Kinabalu MP, said the relief fund was not chaired by him but the party had appointed former State Secretary Tan Sri Simon Sipaun as the chairman.According to him, they bought 3,000 cartons of drinking water at RM6.85 per carton, which was lower that the market price as they bought it directly from the factory, and distributed in Ranau and to the church as well as Kampung Kiau located in the foothills of Mount Kinabalu.
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The SIB church had also contacted them for help and Wong said the committee headed by Sipaun quickly agreed to donate RM5,000 cash due to the urgency of the problem.Wong said they also gave RM10,000 to the Kinabalu Mountain Guide Association and RM10,000 to each family of the four mountain guides who perished during the June 5 earthquake.
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He said DAP Sabah would make public the account book of the relief fund soon.However, the visibly upset Wong demanded that Fung himself come clean."There is one (matter) that I have been keeping (from the public) for you. You (Fung) were the Director of Operation (during the 13th General Election), there was an amount of RM100,000 raised for all the party candidates in Sabah and given to you for safekeeping but it has never been accounted for."Our treasurer has been asking you since two to three years ago but to no avail. Before the election (2013), I received RM5,000 as donation that I initially asked our lawyer Joan Goh to keep because DAP Sabah has no bank account." Wong said since the DAP Sabah committee at that time did not feel right they decided to hand the cash to Fung who was then the treasurer and put it in his bank account.But, Wong claimed Fung never returned the money in full."Only after years of much persuasion that he returned, which I remember, only RM2,000," he said. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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