MUSA CALLS PKR ‘POLITICAL BANKRUPTS’

By : LESLIE LAU

KUALA LUMPUR : Datuk Musa Aman accused the opposition of 'rehashing the same old story' and called them political bankrupts for trying to press Hong Kong to reopen a graft probe for which he said he had already been cleared.

“From the very start, I had the greatest confidence in the integrity of the ICAC and that I would be exonerated. Now the ICAC has cleared me. That brought an end to the pain and suffering my family has to endure for the past years,” he said in a statement last night, referring to Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Earlier this week PKR furnished fresh evidence to Hong Kong’s anti-graft authority on Musa’s RM40 million graft case and was invited to return with more proof on the Sabah chief minister’s alleged money-laundering link with businessman Michael Chia.

Rafizi Ramli, who led the party’s four-member fact-finding mission there, said it was not immediately clear what the ICAC plans do with the new evidence but expressed confidence that the case would likely be reopened.

In PKR’s report to Hong Kong’s graftbusters, three reasons were listed to encourage the world-renowned ICAC to reopen the RM40 million graft probe against Musa and Chia — separate claims from two Sabah MPs that the money was not a political donation to Umno as claimed; and the receipt of a luxury vehicle from Chia by Umno minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz, possibly for corrupt reasons.

Chia’s alleged link with Musa first exploded in the media following an April article by whistleblower site Sarawak Report, which had claimed that the former was caught trying to leave the Hong Kong International Airport with the RM40 million in Singapore currency.

At the time, Chia had allegedly told the authorities that the money was meant for Musa.

The issue hit the headlines again last month when Nazri told Parliament that Musa had been cleared of corruption in the matter after Malaysian and Hong Kong anti-graft authorities found that the money was a “political donation” to Sabah Umno and was not meant for Musa’s personal use.

Musa said he did not understand why PKR could not accept the truth.

“What more do they want? They are trying again to use the same complaint to gain political mileage.

“They are rehashing the same old story. I think I am entitled to conclude that the opposition is a political bankrupt. We are entitled to treat their recent rehashed allegation with the contempt it so richly deserves.

“I remain humble, but surely there is a limit to one’s humility and patience.” he said in the statement.

According to Nazri, the ICAC had closed the case after the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) discovered in its probe that the money in Chia’s possession was meant for Sabah Umno and not Musa.

After Nazri’s denial, Rafizi held a press conference in Parliament revealing what he said was photographic proof that Nazri had allegedly received kickbacks from Chia to clear his name, in the form of a RM459,000 Hummer given to his son.

PKR embarked on its fact-finding mission to Hong Kong this week to uncover if the ICAC’s decision to close to case was due to the lack of co-operation from the MACC.

On Wednesday, Nazri said allegations that Malaysia’s anti-corruption body had failed to co-operate with its Hong Kong counterpart over were “not true”.

Responding to questions from reporters who had pointed out there were claims that the probe was closed by the ICAC due to non-co-operation by the MACC, the minister had said:

“No, that’s not true, when it comes to corruption, theirs is international networking, you cannot not co-operate with other countries’ anti-corruption body. You know that corruption now is trans-border crime... certainly that’s not true.”

“Don’t listen to people, people say a lot of things. These people have no facts backing them and they try to cast aspersion and all that. We should not take what they say seriously unless the body itself says it… what you should be listening to is what ICAC says.” (TMI)