Title : Bank Negara Malaysia's reputation is badly affected
link : Bank Negara Malaysia's reputation is badly affected
Bank Negara Malaysia's reputation is badly affected
Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim wants Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to come clean over its involvement in the 1MDB affair in light of recent allegations, FMT reported.
Calling for a comprehensive investigation, he said everyone would take advantage when a “parent institution” shirked its enforcement responsibilities.
The PKR president was referring to the testimony by former Goldman Sachs Southeast Asia chairman Tim Leissner in a US court last week that BNM had approved an “overnight” foreign exchange transfer of US$1 billion from 1MDB to PetroSaudi International (PSI), after then central bank governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz’s husband had allegedly been bribed to “make it happen”.
Anwar said the central bank’s failure to properly address the banker’s allegations would hurt its reputation.
“BNM is responsible for the flow of money, and it cannot simply wash its hands (off) this claim,” he said at the Dewan Rakyat’s Special Chamber.
Leissner, the star witness in the trial of Roger Ng, former Goldman Sachs head of investment banking in Malaysia, in the Brooklyn federal court in New York, last week described the overnight transfer of the US$1 billion from 1MDB to PetroSaudi as “unprecedented” due to the capital controls in place at that time (2009).
When asked by prosecutors if a bribe had indeed been paid, Leissner said he could not independently confirm it. Zeti’s husband Datuk Seri Tawfiq Ayman, meanwhile, has denied that he had ever received a bribe.
Replying to Leissner’s allegation, BNM said all submissions made by 1MDB were subject to the same approval criteria and internal governance processes that apply to any submission by other entities to the central bank.
Anwar, however, was not impressed.
“That statement is not convincing as it completely shuts off Zeti and Tawfiq from their alleged involvement in this,” he said.
“Although Tawfiq has denied this, it does not negate the information received by Singapore police,” Anwar said.
The Port Dickson MP was referring to reports that Singapore police had informed BNM of suspicious transactions involving a company owned by Tawfiq and his son, with funds coming from accounts linked to Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low.
The Edge previously reported that according to documents it had sighted, Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department had shared this information with the central bank in 2015 and 2016. Zeti was governor at the time.
BNM had said last week that it had furnished information to the relevant law enforcement agencies with respect to accounts belonging to “the husband of a former BNM governor”.
Yesterday, Anwar asked why the matter had been kept under wraps for so long. “It is as if there were parties within BNM colluding (not to expose it),” he said.
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