Noh Omar denies NFC issue ever brought up in Cabinet
By Melissa Chi, The Malaysian Insider
Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Datuk Seri Noh Omar denied today that the decision to award the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) project was discussed during Cabinet meetings.
“I can confirm that NFC is under the High-Impact Projects Committee and at the time of the loan approval to NFC, that was not under the Cabinet, not (mentioned) in the meetings,” Noh (picture) told reporters after the launch of the farmers, livestock breeders and fishermen’s day celebration at the Selangor Mardi headquarters here.
PKR yesterday demanded that the Najib administration disclose all Cabinet meeting minutes from 2006 onwards to determine if Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil was directly involved in the decision to award the NFC project to her husband’s company.
PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli pointed out that NFC executive chairman Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Salleh Ismail, Shahrizat’s husband, had not denied a single allegation and had merely offered explanations for the many discrepancies involved in the federally-funded RM250 million cattle project.
Instead, he said, Mohamad Salleh had made three major admissions when addressing the issue on Thursday — that his company had no experience in the cattle farming industry prior to the project award; that the RM250 million government loan had not been accompanied by a repayment schedule; and that the company had purchased “not one, but two” luxury condominium units for a whopping RM13.8 million in total.
The cattle farming project kicked off in 2008.
