Lim Sian See
1. The purchase by the Selangor Govt of SPLASH has again been postponed – this time to July 2018.
2. Former Selangor MB Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim is critical of the lop-sided concession agreement awarded to SPLASH.
SPLASH is 30% owned by PKR associate, Tan Sri Wan Azmi and makes RM400m yearly even though its paid-up capital is only RM170mil.
3. Khalid wanted to buy SPLASH for RM250mil in Feb 2014 citing that SPLASH shareholders had already made a lot of money and have recouped their investments many times already.
4. Pakatan said this offer is unreasonably low and said this is one reason why Khalid needs to be removed as MB.
5. To force SPLASH to sell, Khalid cancelled SPLASH’s raw water license in May 2014. Without this license, SPLASH cannot operate its business.
6. Khalid was then removed as MB and the new Selangor Govt immediately renewed SPLASH raw water license.
7. The new Selangor Govt then said they want to buy SPLASH for RM2.8 billion instead of RM250mil and gave a Nov 2015 deadline to resolve the purchase of SPLASH.
8. The Nov 2015 deadline was then extended by Selangor govt to Nov 2016. It was then extended again to March 2017. And then extended again to 7 Oct 2017.
And now it has been extended to 7 July 2018.
9. Every year of delay means the Selangor Govt loses RM300mil in lost profits as SPLASH is an incredibly profitable company.
10. Again, Azmin Ali has blamed Federal Govt for the extensions and delays. This time around, Azmin said that the Federal govt had not revealed to the Selangor Govt the valuation that the Fed Govt had placed on SPLASH.
But Federal Govt pointed out that it was not the buyer of SPLASH but merely the financier.
11. Selangor Govt must be the party to make an official offer to SPLASH shareholders but strangely, it has not done so.
This is despite the Selangor Govt previously making multiple offers (all rejected by SPLASH) without any involvement of the Federal Govt.
12. To this end, the water minister had issued public statements twice – in Aug 2017 and Sept 2017, urging the Selangor Govt to not be shy and make the offer to SPLASH.
Both statements were ignored by the Selangor Govt and no reply was given.
13. Even if Selangor Govt makes that offer for RM2.8 billion, the years of delay, dividend payments and increased offer price would mean the Selangor Govt would have lost RM4 billion compared to if Khalid was allowed to complete the deal in Feb 2014.
14. Although this SPLASH deal had become controversial over the years with many allegations of corruption, the Selangor State Govt had repeatedly rejected holding a SELCAT probe into it.
15. Azmin Ali and the Selangor Govt must be probed and must answer why they do not place any urgency on completing this deal – causing billions of losses for the Selangor Govt and the people while benefiting the private owners of SPLASH, including the well known PKR funder, who reaps extra-ordinary profits for each year of delay.
Source: Lim Sian See
