MCA President Wee Ka Siong should stop pretending to be stupid, by saying that Koperasi Jayadiri Sdn Bhd (Kojadi) paying taxes last year to the Inland Revenue Board (IRB), proves that the RM15 million Kojadi received from Yayasan 1MDB was legal. No self-respecting democratic country in the world, would allow you to whitewash laundered funds or sanctify illegal money as legitimate, merely because you paid taxes on those laundered or illegal money.
Wee was quoted as asking in the MCA-owned paper, The Star on 12 July 2019, “how the money Kojadi received from Yayasan 1MDB was considered illegal when RM1.03million was already paid as income tax?”. This is my reply – paying taxes complies with tax laws but does not absolve a corrupted entity from any criminal wrongdoing, if so then Jho Low or Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak can easily pay their taxes and not fear any criminal prosecution.
Now Wee is upset that I did not believe Wee, but chose to believe and praised Kojadi suspended Chairman Datuk Ng Peng Hay 3 times, whom Wee had called Ng a liar. Wee made his claim that Kojadi need not return the RM15 million on the basis of a letter from Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission(MACC) earlier this year that 1MDB is still under investigation.
However, Wee is dishonest by not mentioning that on June 21 2019, MACC filed civil forfeiture applications including freezing their bank accounts, against 41 individuals and entities on those connected with Najib/1MDB. According to newspaper reports, Ng was worried that Kojadi would be next to be subjected to similar action and have its bank account frozen by MACC, and wanted to return the back the RM15 million. However, Ng was stopped from doing so by Wee who used MCA’s outsize influence in Kojadi to interfere in Kojadi’s matters.
On 3 July 2019, Ng’s worse fears were realised when MACC froze the relevant Kojadi’s bank account. If Kojadi was not required to return money to Yayasan 1MDB, then why was the relevant Kojadi’s bank account frozen by MACC? That is why I believed Ng Peng Hay over Wee, even though Ng was a former MCA Melaka State Assemblyman, because Ng rightfully wanted to return the money to Yayasan 1MDB and was punished for wanting to do so, by being suspended by the MCA-controlled Kojadi Board of Directors.
Further I had issued a statement on 12 July, that Yayasan 1MDB had received RM6.1 million in payment from funds returned back by other entities. I had mentioned Kojadi had still not returned a single cent of the RM15 million given by Yayasan 1MDB. This was subsequently confirmed by Wee. The question to Wee then is, if other entities that received funding from Yayasan 1MDB can return the money voluntarily on their own, why not Kojadi?
Like the racist and extremist UMNO, MCA leaders tries to play with chauvinistic sentiments to cover up their own parties’ involvement in corrupt acts, by belittling efforts made by the government and MACC to recover such stolen wealth from those that received monies from 1MDB. BN should not sacrifice ordinary people or voters with no political links or connections just to save themselves.
We leave it to MACC to conduct investigations and take appropriate action, but clearly entities that are closely connected and directly linked politically to BN parties have a moral and ethical obligation to return back the money. Government funds should first and foremost not be used to fund political activities or benefit entities close or connected to them.
MCA is using its MCA-controlled The Star and its influence in the biggest Chinese mainstream media to exert pressure on me to stop me trying to get back 1MDB funds to help pay back the more than RM51 billion 1MDB debt. To the The Star and biggest Chinese mainstream media backing MCA, I would like to quote from former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji,
“In fighting corruption we must ‘first fight the tiger, then the wolf’. We mustn’t go easy on the ‘tigers’; I’ve prepared 100 coffins here, 99 are for corrupt officials, 1 is for me, I’m ready to perish together in this fight if it brings the nation long-term economic stability and the public’s trust in our government”