While MAHB managing director Datuk Badlisham Ghazali said they “welcomed the proposal” by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) for the Auditor-General to audit the company over the KLIA2 scandal, he has repeated stated placed conditions for such an audit to happen.
Last week, he said that MAHB “wanted to discuss the type of audit with the Transport Ministry first”, claiming that as a public-listed company, it was already subjected to “higher scrutiny” from other regulators. He gave the excuse that MAHB gets “audited and reviewed so many times”, they “just don’t want it to overlap”.
Yesterday, Datuk Badlisham added that they would also need the shareholders’ approval before the audit can commence. He said “whether it’s financial, procurement, construction performance of klia2 or operational performance that needs to be audited, that’s what we want to know… Our shareholders need to understand (the purpose of the auditing process) and agree to it before we proceed”.
From the response given by the Managing Director of MAHB, it appears that he does not recognize the severity of the findings of the Public Accounts Committee and clearly feels that the audit by the Auditor-General is a waste of his time.
The PAC had painstakingly interviewed various parties including the officials from the Ministry of Transport, the airport operator, AirAsia Bhd – a key stakeholder and KLIA Consultancy Services, as well as reviewed various documents presented before forming the damning conclusions.
The PAC has found that the main cause of the problems in KLIA2 including the cost which ballooned from RM1.7 billion to RM4 billion and its repeated delay in completion was due to mismanagement and very questionable decision-making by the MAHB management.
These included the decisions to locate KLIA2 at KLIA West, a site which has been documented by engineers as costly and ill-suited for airport construction and the choice of a satellite-type terminal instead of a finger pier terminal as proposed by the airport consultants. These highly questionable decisions have resulted in the exceedingly high cost of the airport and the consequent delays in its completion.
These are very serious findings because they involve a public concession which was awarded to MAHB as the sole owner, builder and operator of the airport. What’s more, MAHB is substantially owned by the Government and Government-linked funds. Khazanah owns 37% of the airport while Permodalan Nasional Bhd and the Employees Provident Fund owns 13.5% and 13.2% respectively.
The aspects to which what the Auditor-General should be “auditing” in MAHB is very clear and has been outlined in the PAC report. While MAHB is “regulated” by the Securities Commission and Bursa Malaysia as a public-listed company, the 2 authorities are not responsible for how MAHB spends its money, or if it makes high or low returns on its investment and expenditure.
Instead, as the newly appointed Managing Director of MAHB, Datuk Badlisham should demonstrate greater urgency to ensure that no stones are left unturned in the exercise by the Auditor-General to ensure full accountability in the decisions, actions and spending by the company as a matter of both shareholder and public interest.
The Minister of Transport, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, has on the other hand kept a deafening silence on the serious findings of the report as it the report is trivial or nothing to do with his Ministry. The shocking lack of action, responsibility and ownership of the KLIA2 scandal under the Ministry’s care is completely unacceptable.
Are both MAHB and the Ministry of Transport both colluding and playing the quiet “tai-ji” game of passing the buck around the table in the hope that the issue will just magically disappear from the radar of the scrutinising public?
We call upon Khazanah Nasional, the single largest shareholder of MAHB to demand the top management of MAHB to stop dilly-dallying and immediately initiate steps to “welcome” the Auditor-General into the Company. This is to prove that MAHB has nothing to hide and ensure that the wealth of the nation has not been wrongly abused, while the tax-payers’ monies are properly accounted for.