KUALA LUMPUR: It has never been Umno’s practice to place money from political donations into the personal accounts of trustees, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday, rejecting claims he had done the same amid the ongoing controversy over the billions of ringgit in Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s accounts.

Dr Mahathir said while he was the Umno president, he was one of three trustees who ensured that all political donations were deposited into a bank account held in trust for the party. He said he later ensured that all the money, shares and other title deeds in Umno’s possession were transferred to his successor, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Dr Mahathir wrote in his blog yesterday that claims of money from political donations to Umno had also gone into his personal accounts were “baseless” and “slander”.

The retired statesman recounted his experience in the 1964 and 1969 general elections, when RM20,000 from the Umno headquarters was handed over to him to be distributed to parliamentary and state constituencies. “Because I was not willing to keep the RM20,000 cash, I deposited it into my account and I issued cheques to the Dewan Rakyat and state assembly election committees in accordance with the distribution amount set by the headquarters.

“The money was not from donors, but it was Umno’s money that was given to divisions for the candidates to use,” he said. He said when he was expelled from Umno in 1970, the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) raided his house and clinic and found the stubs of the cheques issued by him.

He was fined RM300,000 for failing to declare his income as the party headquarters refused to admit the money came from Umno.

“In the end, I was fined RM130,000. At that time, I was already a minister. I paid the fine in instalments and finally finished paying it when I became the deputy prime minister,” he added.

Dr Mahathir asked what was the IRB going to do about the alleged RM2.6 billion that had been in Najib’s accounts. 

He also said that if Umno had used that amount of money for election campaigning, it was a clear breach of election rules that place limits on the expenses of each election candidate. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in digitaledge Daily, on August 4, 2015.