Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR: More than a dozen police officers assigned by a special government task force investigating a money trail of billions of ringgit to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s bank accounts spent the day raiding the office of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

They spent about eight hours at 1MDB's office in Menara IMC in Jalan Sultan Ismail. They left the building at 6.30pm yesterday with a plastic box marked as containing laptops and a device believed to be a server.

1MDB president and group executive director Arul Kanda Kandasamy declined to confirm the items that had been seized when he emerged from the building at 6.50pm.

“The police arrived at 9.40am and conducted their investigation in a very thorough manner,” he said, adding that 1MDB was extending its full cooperation to the authorities.

He declined to comment further, only saying that 1MDB was now the subject of an official investigation.

A police officer when approached by the media said that they were done searching 1MDB’s office for now and did not know whether they will be assigned to return for further investigations.

Media personnel started camping outside the building at noon yesterday, but were barred from entering the building.

At 6.15pm, five officers came out from the building, followed by others with a trolley that carried a box containing the server and the plastic box about 10 minutes later

The special task force comprises Bank Negara Malaysia governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akthar Aziz, Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed.

It was formed to probe allegations reported by The Wall Street Journal last Friday that some US$700 million (RM2.6 billion) had been transferred to Najib's accounts in AmBank in Kuala Lumpur.

The task force has frozen six bank accounts and seized documents related to 17 bank accounts.

It had already raided the offices of SRC International Sdn Bhd, Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd and Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd, the companies which were part of the local transfer of funds totalling US$11.1 million (RM42 million).

Earlier yesterday, Khalid told reporters that the police would investigate how the WSJ had obtained access to the bank documents.

The WSJ had said that the documents were from the official Malaysian probe into 1MDB.

Abdul Gani yesterday evening in a separate statement also ordered an investigation into the leak of confidential documents related to the probe.

The WSJ yesterday uploaded onto the Internet the documents it had used in its report about the movement of funds into Najib's accounts.

Abdul Gani yesterday emphasised that he would not hesitate to prosecute any person found to have leaked confidential investigation-related information as it is a criminal offence under Section 133 of the Financial Services Act 2013 and Section 145 of the Islamic Financial Services Act 2013.

The provisions in these Acts make it an offence for anyone in a bank to disclose private information of customers. — The Malaysian Insider

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on July 9, 2015.

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