The fact remains that the amount lost was much greater than reported to parliament, the cabinet and the public
Eric See-To
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s lawyer, Haniff Khatri Abdulla, keeps going in circles to repeat things which I have already answered.
He slammed me as “government propaganda army’s style of spinning facts into conniving fiction and spinning fiction into conniving facts.”
He questioned why PM Najib “remained blind, deaf and mute on the forex issue for the last eight years?”.
I already wrote this yesterday:
“Since 13 years ago (when Dr M retired), no one from Govt or who had worked for BNM at that time had come out to blow the whistle that the losses was much bigger than reported.
It was only when Datuk Murad, the former Assistant Governor of BNM shocked Malaysians in February 2017 with this revelation and claimed that there was a cover-up, that the current govt called for a RCI.
Why did Datuk Murad take so long to spill the beans? You will have to ask him. Perhaps he waited until Mahathir’s influence in government was truly over? Or perhaps he could no longer stand Mahathir’s hypocrisy? We can only speculate.
If you wait any longer, more witnesses and suspects will not be around.
And then the lawyer repeats “Why all these rush after waiting more then 27 years?”.
For which I already explained that for the period 13 to 27 years ago, Mahathir was still in charge. Since the RCI findings concluded there were attempts to cover up, it would have been silly for Mahathir to allegedly “cover up” and yet call an RCI for it.
The lawyer continues… “Why mislead the Palace, Parliament and the public by this intentional dishonest conduct.”
The charge of misleading the Palace is very serious. I hope that Tuan Haniff can back this allegation up. The “R” in RCI stands for “Royal”. The palace’s agreement was received to conduct the RCI and it was only possible to release the RCI report after the palace has gone through and given approval.
The fact remains that the amount lost was much greater than reported to parliament, the cabinet and the public.
This RM31.5 billion then (equivalent to RM100 billion now) was a staggering 18.2% of our country’s GDP in 1994 and had actually caused BNM to go technically bankrupt before it was bailed out with share assets injections.
(For comparison, 1MDB’s total debt exposure is 2% of our country’s current GDP)
The amount of exposure then was as high as 3 times the country’s GDP and more than 5 times our foreign reserves – this means If the trades had gone even more horribly wrong, Malaysia would have been bankrupted 3 times over.
The RCI also concluded that the losses caused serious damage to our economy and contributed to the devastating 1997 recession when speculators attacked our depleted reserves.
Unlike 1MDB which underwent a special Auditor-General’s report, a full PAC inquiry and police investigations, the BNM Forex scandal never had any such investigations until now.
Whether anyone had personally benefited from this scandal is up to the police to investigate as this area was not part of the RCI’s scope.
I know it is his job and he is paid to protect his client but playing down a scandal of this proportion is downright immoral.
READ MORE HERE: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.
