RM12 billion PKFZ scandal - 6 times bigger than RM2.5 billion
BMF scandal of Mahathir
MCA President and Transport Minister,
Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat should stop running from the question why he
had failed to honour his repeated public undertakings to "tell all"
and make public the full report of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
audit into the mega-billion ringgit Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ)
scandal. Malaysians want to know what he is hiding.
The PwC audit report into the PKFZ scandal has been described in
the media as "a damning disclosure of mismanagement, clandestine
deals, conflicts of interest and a total disregard for transparency
and accountability" for a project which was supposed to cost RM1.845
billion in 2002 under the then MCA President and Transport Minister,
Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik but ended up at RM4.6 billion under
MCA Deputy President and Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Chan Kong
Choy.
Now, horror of horrors, it is reported that the final cost of the
PKFZ scandal under MCA President and the third MCA Transport
Minister, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat is the frightening figure of RM12
billion, which would have to be borne by the Malaysian taxpayers
although the Cabinet had been assured in 2002 that the PKFZ project
was a feasible, self-financing project that would not require a
single sen of government financing!
If the PKFZ scandal had ballooned from RM1.8 billion in 2002 to
RM12 billion in seven years under three MCA Ministers, it will be
six times bigger than the first Mahathir mega financial scandal –
RM2.5 billion BMF scandal!
RM12 billion of public funds is no chicken feed – it could build
three Penang Bridges at RM4 billion each, 120 hospitals at RM100
million each, 1,200 schools at RM10 million each or 300,000 low-cost
houses at RM40,000 each!
The MCA national leadership must fully account as to how three
MCA Ministers in the past seven years had presided over one of the
biggest financial scandals in the nation’s 52-year history.
The latest excuse of a "technical issue" preventing the full
publication of the PwC report – that the Port Klang Authority
Chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng had only written to the PcW on April 30
to seek its consent to release the report – is most laughable and a
terrible reflection of Ong's Ministerial irresponsibility to honour
his 14-month pledge to reveal the whole truth about the PKFZ
scandal. |
