Find 1MDB witnesses or we’ll start looking ourselves, PKR man tells authorities
(Malay Mail Online) – A PKR lawmaker said today his party will launch a public initiative to find several key witnesses for ongoing investigations on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) if Malaysia’s central bank and anti-graft body do not immediately work with Interpol to locate the missing witnesses.
Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen said the onus falls on Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to put in a formal request for assistance from Interpol to find the five witnesses, after Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said that no such request was made.
“Failing to do so within 24 hours will amount to a breach of their fiduciary duties to investigate the 1MDB scandal without fear or favour,” Wong Chen said at a news conference at the Parliament lobby here.
“Therefore I urge Bank Negara and MACC to do its job and request Interpol to trace them immediately. If these individuals are not located within the next two weeks, PKR will launch a Facebook initiative to ask net citizens to help post sightings of these individuals,” he added.
In a written reply yesterday, Ahmad Zahid said Malaysia’s Interpol unit cannot track the witnesses sought by BNM and the MACC as no requests to locate billionaire Low Taek Jho, former 1MDB executive directors Casey Tang Keng Chee and Jasmine Loo Ai Swan, former SRC International managing director Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, and Goldman Sachs Group Incorporation Malaysia’s country chairman for corporate finance Datuk Yusof Annuar Yaacob.
Ahmad Zahid said the police are “unable to trace and track” the five as the police have not opened any investigation on the individuals.
Wong Chen today argued that the five witnesses are “not inherently difficult to locate”, taking the example of Loo who he claimed had been tracked to a high-end apartment in New York by the New York Times last September.
Wong Chen added that Loo was named as a donor to the Black Ball society fundraiser organised by singer Alicia Keys earlier this month.
“These five key individuals are not hiding in the caves of Tora Bora but are in fact visibly living the high life,” he said, referring to a cave formation in Afghanistan.
