Zahid Hamidi today clarified that he was not the defence minister when the government paid out over RM6 billion for warships that were not delivered as part of a RM9 billion project ….
Yesterday, PAC chairman Wong Kah Wong had provided updates on an ongoing PAC probe on the non-delivery of the warships, noting that the project worth more than RM9 billion was awarded through direct negotiations in 2014 to the main contractor Boustead Naval Shipyard (BNS) Sdn Bhd for the supply of six units of second-generation Littoral Combatant Ships (LCS) warships to the Royal Malaysian Navy.
In this project which is the largest-ever acquisition by the Defence Ministry, Wong said RM6.083 billion had been paid as of October 2020 but without a single LCS delivered by BNS, despite the schedule requiring two LCS ships to be completed by now …
Former deputy defence minister Liew Chin Tong had in September told the Dewan Negara that Putrajaya’s special investigation committee on procurement, governance and finance, had discovered that RM1 billion of the RM5.94 billion paid for the warships could not be traced, and had in October urged the government to investigate the missing RM1 billion.
Zahid is right. The man in the job when this project was commissioned without proper tender and the missing billion disappeared was, of course, Najib Razak’s cousin Hishammuddin Hussein, who is right back in the driving seat now as Foreign Minister – the elected anti-corruption government having been turfed out of office thanks to a backdoor opposition coup and bought MPs.
Whether or (far more likely) not inspections reveal a single ship even started for this record sum of money is of course bound to be declared an ‘Official Secret’ for ‘national security reasons’, the handy tactic used by the same bunch of kleptocrats to cover up their previous thefts.
What better incentive to seize back power than to prevent further dangerous exposes such as this and to close down all the existing corruption trials against them?
However, this is plainly not a group of fellows to merely stop at cover up when opportunities present themselves. Malaysians have been treated to the spectacle of a whole new set of ‘negotiated contracts‘ initiated through the latest ‘Covid Budget’, which itself provides a handy framework for further disappearing billions. Make hay while the sun shines, as the saying goes – PN are working overtime.
Clearly, since a billion (at the very least) is now established as having completely disappeared, everyone associated with this contract should by now have been hauled in for questioning by the MACC and bailed pending criminal proceedings.
Meanwhile, the first witness who ought to be called before the PAC for forensic questioning on each and every decision relating to this latest evil raid on the Rakyat’s savings is the former man in charge of the entire corrupt and non-transparent process, namely the present Foreign Minister of the present unelected Frankenstein administration propped up by crooks seeking to be let off the hook.