Why didn’t Thomas take action on Zeti-Jho Low link, says MP

(FMT) – Former Attorney-General (AG) Tommy Thomas has been asked to explain his failure to act against then Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor Zeti Akthar Aziz over the 1MDB scandal, when he claimed her involvement was “public knowledge”.

Klang MP Charles Santiago of DAP said there had always been questions about Zeti’s role in the scandal and that Thomas’s claim came as “no surprise”.

“The question that arises is why he (Thomas) did not act in the 20 months that he was the AG,” Santiago told FMT.

Thomas, in a recent interview, claimed that Zeti and her husband Tawfiq Ayman had “facilitated” fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low.

Zeti’s role in 1MDB came into question after the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) revealed that a company in Singapore controlled by Tawfiq received at least RM65 million in 1MDB funds.

Singapore police were also reported to have informed BNM in 2015 and 2016 of suspicious transactions involving companies owned by Tawfiq, with the funds coming from accounts linked to Jho Low. Zeti was BNM governor at the time.

In the interview, Thomas claimed it was “public knowledge” that Zeti and Ayman had “facilitated” Jho Low, believed to be the mastermind of the 1MDB scandal.

“But I think when we were investigating 1MDB, and as I said, it gave rise to about seven or eight prosecutions against different parties. At that stage, the MACC (investigation) papers, at least to my knowledge, had not been completed on Zeti and all the others.

“So I never had the chance to look at those investigation papers,” he said in an interview on YouTube.

There have been growing calls recently for Zeti, a witness in the corruption trial of former prime minister Najib Razak on charges related to 1MDB, to break her silence on her family’s links to the scandal.