It took foreign media to expose Mara deal: Lajim
Published on: Thursday, July 02, 2015
Kota Kinabalu: Parti Keadilan Sabah chief, Datuk Seri Lajim Ukin said the Malaysian authorities should not be too quick to brush aside allegations of kickbacks in the Mara purchase of an apartment block in Melbourne, Australia."How can you just brush aside any wrong doing when you have not conducted a thorough investigation and extensive interviews, including on new evidence coming out from Australia? "Even the Australian authorities are still investigating the claims of the case which happened in their country involving parties from the two countries," said Lajim.
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He claimed that the purchase of the property in Melbourne at an allegedly inflated price by Mara could be just the tip of the iceberg, as far as bribery and cost-inflating practice are concerned."It took a foreign media to be the whistleblower as Malaysian media have come under the stress of various curtailing and prohibitive laws that suppress any good investigative or expose kind of reports especially against the ruling party."The Australian paper, The Age, however did manage to see the relevant information including documents that led to the exposure, beyond reasonable doubt, of bribery and the glaring actions by Malaysian officers to inflate the price tag of the Melbourne apartment block now in question," he said.The apartments were bought in 2013 to provide housing for Malay students around Melbourne, mostly under Mara scholarship.
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However, as usual, he said Malaysian ministers and officials, were swift to deny any wrongdoing and dismissed the Australian claim as baseless with even Mara Chairman, Tan Sri Annuar Musa saying "we are not losing money, we are making money." The Age however claimed they have solid evidence to support its report that the price tag was inflated from AUS$17.8 to AUS$22.5 million, and that the difference was to be pocketed as "kickbacks" for senior Mara officials, who currently have not been named.
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"The quick denial by Annuar and also by the minister in-charge of Mara, Datuk Mohd Shafie Apdal, did not help. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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