Pua: Takeover of 1MDB firms ‘daylight robbery’
It’s massive travesty of justice as Putrajaya sold them to 1MDB for token sum.
(Free Malaysia Today) – The Opposition wants Second Finance Minister Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah to explain transparently how the Government intends to make the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) and Bandar Malaysia, both 1MDB companies, separate independent entities owned by the Ministry of Finance (MoF).
It appears that if two and two were put together, it can only be deduced that the Government will assume the debts arising from the two 1MDB companies, and perhaps even pay 1MDB more based on their revalued and inflated asset prices.
Hence, the plan to make TRX and Bandar Malaysia independent entities was in actual fact not innocuous at all. “Instead, it was a blatant attempt to bailout 1MDB with billions of ringgit of tax-payers funds,” said Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua, speaking up on behalf of the Opposition.
Doesn’t TRX and Bandar Malaysia becoming separate entities independent from 1MDB but remaining under the MoF merely means the tax-payers will have to buy them out from 1MDB and bail them out in the process?
Pua, who is also DAP National Publicity Secretary, was commenting on Husni Hanadzlah’s announcement on Friday that TRX and Bandar Malaysia will be “established as standalone companies, with full autonomy and accountability for their operational and financial performance”.
Husni Hanadzlah emphasised that “the Ministry of Finance (MoF) will remain a key shareholder in TRX and Bandar Malaysia”.
While the statement sounds rather innocuous as the disastrous 1MDB suffering from RM42 billion of debt was being wound down, what does establishing these two properties as “standalone companies” under the MoF actually imply?
By the natural logic of the statement, it would mean that the MoF would acquire the shares of the companies owning these assets – KLIFD Sdn Bhd and Bandar Malaysia Sdn Bhd respectively. “On top of that, we are made to understand that the motive behind the action was to relieve 1MDB of its overwhelming debt burden,” added Pua.
If however the Government decided to acquire TRX and Bandar Malaysia at their revalued asset prices of RM7 billion and still relieve 1MDB of their associated loans of RM3.2 billion, then Malaysians will be forking out a total of RM10.2 billion just for these transactions alone, warned Pua.
“Such a move would be a massive travesty of justice because the Federal Government sold these two properties to 1MDB for only RM194 million and RM1.69 billion respectively, totalling less than RM1.9 billion.”
If tax payers were to pay the inflated RM7 billion or worse, RM10.2 billion to buy back these properties from 1MDB, after only selling these lands to the company at bargain basement prices less than four years ago, “it would be nothing short of a daylight robbery”.
