1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) says former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is recycling 'stale and unproven allegations' against the debt-ridden firm.
The Malaysian Insider file pic, September 26, 2015.
1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) today accused former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad of continually "reusing and recycling stale and unproven allegations" against the troubled company, which it said had been repeatedly proven wrong.
"1MDB regrets that Dr Mahathir keeps forgetting the facts, not just from 1MDB but from independent and respected agencies such as the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC)."Nevertheless, 1MDB is committed to continue providing responses in order to help Dr Mahathir, a veteran former politician, remember our fact-based answers," it said in a statement responding to the latest blog entry of Malaysia's longest serving prime minister.
Writing on his blog yesterday, Dr Mahathir repeated his claims that Putrajaya had given a RM1 million capital to the debt-laden company, but that 1MDB had borrowed RM42 billion from the market and had to pay a high interest rate of 5.9%.
He added that 1MDB had bought government land at RM60 per square foot when the market price was over RM3,000 psf.
In rebutting the former prime minister, who is now one of the company's staunchest critics, 1MDB said Dr Mahathir "conveniently forgets" that it is 100% owned by the Malaysian government and that therefore, any land value increase directly and solely benefited the government.
"Apart from now quoting a much lower land value of RM3,000 psf (versus RM7,000 psf in a previous allegation by him), Dr Mahathir forgets to acknowledge that 1MDB has committed RM3 billion in infrastructure development in TRX," it said, using the acronym for its real estate development Tun Razak Exchange.
"This equates to approximately RM1,500 of infrastructure expenditure psf, paid for by 1MDB, and subsequently recovered through land sales".
On 1MDB's RM42 billion debt, the Finance-Ministry owned firm said it had already answered that all the money was accounted for and had provided a comprehensive breakdown of how it utilised the debts.
"Dr Mahathir has also repeated his old claim that 1MDB transferred funds to the private accounts of the prime minister. As he will be well aware, this is despite the independent MACC clearly confirming on August 3, 2015 that the funds were from a private donor and not from 1MDB," it said. – September 26, 2015.
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