(June 5): How did the valuation of 1Malaysia Development Bhd's (1MDB)'s Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) and Bandar Malaysia land bank shoot up by 157% in just one year, DAP questioned today.

National publicity chief Tony Pua said Putrajaya's spokesperson on 1MDB, the second finance minister, had let slip in his TV1 interview two days ago that the 28-hectare TRX and 200-hectare Bandar Malaysia were now worth RM7 billion and RM11 billion respectively.

Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah had said their combined value of RM18 billion proved that 1MDB would be able to pay off its monster debts over the longer term, Pua said.

But Pua countered that these revised valuations came as a shock, adding that even the previously revised valuations presented in the March 31, 2014 financial statements were only worth a fraction of the newly disclosed figures.

In those statements, TRX land belonging to KLIFD Sdn Bhd was already then revalued to RM2.7 billion while the Sungai Besi military airbase land sold to Bandar Malaysia Sdn Bhd was then revalued to RM4.29 billion, and both of these added up to almost RM7 billion.

"The question now is how did the valuations of these pieces of property leap by 157% in just one year?”

He said that even worse was the fact that these properties were purchased from the Malaysian government at only RM194 million and RM1.69 billion in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

"In less than nine years, 1MDB gets to 'profit' nearly 900% despite having done almost nothing on these pieces of prime land over the last few years.

"We want to know if the second finance minister was spewing gibberish and just plucked these new outlandish valuations out of thin air to present an optimistic picture of 1MDB," Pua said, demanding to know how these valuations were arrived at.

He also asked if there were more sinister reasons for the values to have been massively inflated.

Pua reiterated concern that Husni's earlier statement on TRX and Bandar Malaysia being made separate entities owned by the Finance Ministry would mean that the government would essentially acquire KLIFD and Bandar Malaysia from 1MDB at very high prices.

He said that based on the fund's March 2014 accounts, Husni had already said if the government paid asset prices of RM7 billion and still relieved 1MDB of their associated loans of RM3.2 billion, Malaysians would be forking out a total of RM10.2 billion just for these transactions alone.

Pua added that based on the valuation, the government would now have to fork out a whopping RM18 billion, or as much as RM21.2 billion if KLIFD and Bandar Malaysia’s associated loans are taken into consideration, and called it "daylight robbery" of taxpayers' funds. – The Malaysian Insider