Batu Puteh saga: AG denies he, or kin, own companies
Gani told PKR strategic director Rafizi Ramli to check with the Companies Commission of Malaysia and its Hong Kong counterpart.
(Malay Mail) – Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail has said that neither he nor his family members are shareholders in any company in Malaysia or Hong Kong, in response to graft allegations over the Pulau Batu Puteh fiasco.
Gani told PKR strategic director Rafizi Ramli to check with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) and its Hong Kong counterpart after the latter urged him last Tuesday to list down the firms where he and his family members are shareholders.
“If it is true that my family members and I are board directors as alleged, then this is a miraculous thing,” Abdul Gani was reported today by Malay-language daily Utusan Malaysia as saying.
“Actually, we are not involved. Anyone, including Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli, can check our status in SSM or the company registrar in Hong Kong to confirm this,” he added.
Gani has offered to show Rafizi his bank details in any country in order to discount claims that money was deposited into his Hong Kong account after the 2007 Pulau Batu Puteh territorial dispute case at the International Court of Justice.
Last Tuesday, Rafizi also sought details of the bank balances in the top public prosecutor’s and his family’s bank accounts in Malaysia and Hong Kong, beginning January 2005 to December 2010.
The opposition lawmaker has said that he would seek help from Hong Kong’s graftbusters to investigate Abdul Gani for bribery over the 2007 landmark loss of the island that lies between the waters of the nation’s southernmost state of Johor and the republic that had once been part of Malaysia.
The move follows a statutory declaration sent by former Kuala Lumpur Crime Investigation Department chief Datuk Mat Zain Ibrahim to the Prime Minister’s Office on October 9.
In it, Mat Zain defended his earlier allegation that Gani was bribed to intentionally lose the Pulau Batu Puteh case.
Mat Zain had quoted prominent Umno lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah as saying, “You will not believe your eyes if you were to see the amount of cash that was transferred into Gani’s account in Hong Kong.”
Shafee has since distanced himself from Mat Zain’s allegations, rejecting the remarks in his affidavit-in-reply for the government’s appeal against the sodomy acquittal of Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim last week.
Pulau Batu Puteh, or Pedra Branca as it is now known, was a disputed island claimed by Malaysia and Singapore since 1979, when Malaysia published a map indicating the island to be within its territory.
This led to a nearly three-decade dispute with Singapore that was finally ended when the island was ruled to be Singaporean territory by the International Court of Justice in 2008.
