This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 17, 2015.

IPOH: Perak Menteri Besar Incorporated (MB Inc) yesterday dismissed allegations that it had been given more than 4,000ha of state land since its revival in 2012.

Its chief executive officer Datuk Aminuddin Hashim said the claim by DAP’s Sitiawan assemblyman Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham last week appeared to have been released to put MB Inc in a bad light.

“The total parcel of land owned by MB Inc is some 890ha. It was obtained through normal procedures, as any government agency, via applications to the state government.

“We are dismayed by the wrongful statement by Ngeh, which is full of inaccuracies, mischievousness and some downright falsehoods that are malicious and defamatory,” he told reporters in Ipoh yesterday.

“As Ngeh’s statements, which were widely reported in the media, caused much confusion to the public and harmed the reputation of MB Inc as well as the office of Perak Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Zambry Abd Kadir. We are consulting our lawyers to take the appropriate legal action.”

Aminuddin also defended the formation of MB Inc, which was first set up in 1951, under the Menteri Besar Incorporated Enactment 1951 and passed by the state assembly. “It is not an entity owned by the menteri besar, not political and not newly set up.

He denied that MB Inc had not furnished reports to the state assembly, saying it had cooperated in answering numerous questions raised in the state assembly since being reactivated in 2012.

He said MB Inc’s aim was to help the state government generate additional income through sustainable mining, responsible property development and viable strategic industries.

“The state government can then channel the additional income to various beneficial programmes for the people. “Our ‘true north’ is to increase income and reduce leakage, but not to the extent that we crowd the market but instead, to improve the industry.”

He said 594ha of Bandar Tasik Amanjaya, a township project being developed near the Ipoh-Lumut Highway, was among land parcels owned by MB Inc. — The Malaysian Insider