(May 29): The president of debt-laden 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) should stop making seemingly clever manoeuvres in denying allegations that he supplied false bank statements to Bank Negara Malaysia, DAP said today.

The party’s national publicity chief Tony Pua instead urged Arul Kanda Kandasamy to answer two questions on 1MDB's cash in Swiss private bank BSI in Singapore.

"Arul should get straight to the point – did he distribute or present false BSI Bank statements to anyone, and was there was a fake letter addressed to Bank Negara submitted to two banks by 1MDB?

"The more he tries to dance around the topic, the deeper a hole he will be digging for himself," Pua said in a statement today.

Arul yesterday refuted whistleblower portal Sarawak Report’s blogpost that he provided a false statement to the central bank, saying that the blog was lying about 1MDB by providing false information and unfounded allegations.

Sarawak Report recently published a post saying that Arul had provided a false statement to Bank Negara about 1MDB's cash in BSI in Singapore.

"This is a lie. I have never provided any such statement to Bank Negara. To state otherwise is blatantly false and incorrect, as are any allegations that are based on this premise," Arul had said.

1MDB has debts of some RM42 billion but Putrajaya says its assets of RM51 billion can cover the sum.

Pua said today that in protesting his innocence, Arul had not referred to the letter addressed to Bank Negara which was never delivered, and which was used to deceive two different banks, including Deutsche Bank.

He said it was just another one of Arul’s cleverly worded denials to mislead Malaysians who may not know any better.

Pua said that when re-reading the Sarawak Report with regards to the accusation Arul had made, he could not find any part which said that Arul supplied fake documents to Bank Negara.

He added that what he read was that the Singaporean authorities had supplied the Malaysian central bank with information alleging that Arul was distributing fake bank statements.

"Hence the key to the accusation was never specifically about Arul presenting a false bank statement to BNM.

"It was about the fact that he had distributed such statements which was found to be false, and it is crucial to note that Arul merely denied that it was specifically distributed to BNM," Pua said.

The Petaling Jaya Utara MP urged Arul to stop his manoeuvring, adding that this was no different from Arul’s attempts to silence the critics of 1MDB’s investments in the Cayman Islands when he announced in January that the balance of the fund had been “redeemed” in its entirety.

"We now know of course that the entire redemption was a fraud as there was no cash involved and whatever paper assets there was, was merely shifted from the Caymans to the BSI Bank account in Singapore," Pua said.

Sarawak Report said in April that 1MDB had issued false bank statements pertaining to its subsidiary Brazen Sky Ltd's accounts in BSI Bank in Singapore.

Citing information it had received, the website said the bank had told Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that the document did not originate from them.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has also been accused by former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad of "lying" about the redeemed investment, which he said was in cash form totalling US$1.103 billion (RM4.08 billion) in March.

Najib, who is also finance minister and chairman of 1MDB's advisory board, said this in a written parliamentary reply to Pua.

Arul Kanda in February had vouched that the cash was in the firm's account in BSI Bank when giving an interview with Singapore's Business Times.

But Najib last week, in another parliamentary written reply to "amend" his earlier answer, said the investment redeemed by 1MDB was assets in US dollars for the purpose of balancing its liabilities which were also in US dollars. – The Malaysian Insider