Muhyiddin insisted that the opinion was a personal one. — Picture by Saw Siow FengKUALA LUMPUR, May 21 — Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin downplayed today his call to sack every board member of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) that was revealed in a leaked video, pointing out that he had made the same suggestion before in public.
The deputy prime minister, however, insisted that the opinion was a personal one, and he has yet to receive any response from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak on the matter.
“It was my personal view that I made in a closed-door meeting, in a political course organised by the training bureau. For me, it was my personal view so that my political leader friends can better understand [the issue].
“This is not a new thing. I have spoken the same thing outside,” Muhyiddin told reporters today in Parliament here.
“What is more important is that we want to ensure, if we can, a solution for the matter,” he added.
In the video shot about a week ago and posted on a blog called APANAMA, Muhyiddin said the Barisan Nasional-led federal government must take the action or risk being booted out of Putrajaya come the next national polls.
He said he could not fathom how the state-owned investment fund managed to rack up such a huge debt pile in a short span of time.
Najib has been under pressure of late over his handling of the 1MDB fiasco, with his predecessor Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad openly demanding that he step down for allowing the fund to accumulate some RM42 billion in debt to date from the time it was incorporated in 2009.
Most recently, the fund was pilloried after the finance ministry — which Najib also heads — declared that the US$1.103 billion (RM3.91 billion) that 1MDB redeemed from its offshore account in the Cayman Islands into a Singaporean bank is not in actual cash but assets.
This added to public anger over an expose on RM188.5 million paid to 1MDB by pilgrimage fund Lembaga Tabung Haji for 1.5 acres in the Tun Razak Exchange, and also some RM3 billion invested by the Employees Provident Fund and Retirement Fund Inc in the controversial fund.
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