Yet another scandal at Bank Rakyat
Published on: Thursday, September 01, 2016
Kuala Lumpur: The current MACC investigation of top Bank Rakyat personnel is not the first scandal involving the bank.In 1977, its then bank chairman, the late Datuk Seri Harun Idris, was sentenced to jail for corruption.Harun, who was also the former Selangor mentri besar, was arrested and charged together with the bank's managing director Datuk Abu Mansor Basir and general manager Ismail Din.
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They were accused of forging minutes of a meeting for the purpose of cheating the bank by pledging its stocks to the First National City Bank (now Citibank) to get letters of credit for Tinju Dunia Sdn Bhd to stage the Muhammad Ali vs Joe Bugner fight, causing Bank Rakyat to lose RM7.9mil.In 1977, the High Court sentenced Harun to six months in jail for forgery and a RM15,000 fine for the abetment of criminal breach of trust.Abu Mansor was handed a two-year jail sentence while Ismail was sentenced to a year's imprisonment.Later in the same year, the Federal Court upheld the conviction and increased Harun's sentence to four years, describing him as "the principal actor in the drama".
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It also increased Abu Mansor's jail term to three years but reduced Ismail's to a day's jail and a RM10,000 fine.However, after serving three years, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong pardoned Harun in 1981.
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A White Paper that was presented in Parliament in June 1979 revealed that as at December 1975, there was an accumulated loss of RM65mil.The White Paper, which was based on a report by accounting firm Price Waterhouse & Co, had cited malpractices such as the lack of proper plans and studies for operations and expansion of activities, system weakness and poor control over lending activities and even dishonesty.In the latest scandal, A RM15 million allocation to produce a coffee-table book on a prominent Malaysian political figure went, instead, into the pockets of two top executives of the local bank, three members of a publishing company and several lawyers.The multi-million-ringgit budget for the non-existent book project was provided by the local bank, which is also a government-linked company.The bank executives had cooperated with the publishing company and a law firm to siphon the money into various accounts."Payment was made to the (publisher), but no such printing occurred," a source from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) told New Straits Times."The project was approved by the two (bank executives) and sub-contracted to their cronies, the publishing company and the law firm. There was a clear abuse of power."They shared the money among themselves and only later, when someone made noise, did the publishers claim to have printed the book at a very low cost, not even half the amount."Another source within the investigation said the publishers claimed that 24,000 copies of the cook were printed. The books were to be publishers and distributed earlier this year.To make matters worse, he said, no one had actually seen the printed books, leading to the possibility that they may not even exist.MACC Investigation Division director Datuk Azam Baki said that investigations into the scandal started this year following a public tip-off, adding that the person was someone form the "inside".However, he did not elaborate on whether the source was form the bank, publishing company of law firm.He also said there would be no more arrests at the moment, adding that investigations were ongoing and MACC was looking into the issues of corruption and abuse of power.One of the sources said that the book project, which was "planned" last year, was to profit both the bank and publishing company, which was why a law firm was roped in."This is based in their story here. The lawyers were supposed to do the contracts and agreements. Their legal fees were included as part of the RM15 million allocation," said the source.Two lawyers, the source said, were arrested on Thursday, together with the bank's managing director, who holds the title of "Datuk", a lower-ranking officer believed to be the procurement manager, and two others, a director and an employee, from the publishing company.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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