Dato’ Eric See-To
The opposition frequently targets various Federal government projects and initiatives such as ECRL or deals in TRX and even GST to claim that these are corrupted deal to “steal” money to pay for 1MDB.
This is their tactic.
However, the reality is that even if the government really needed money they can always ask Petronas to fork out the money – just like how Tun Mahathir used to raid Petronas to funds for his various misdeeds including bailing out his sons.
The current PM Najib Govt does not do what Mahathir used to do – preferring to let Petronas have sufficient capital to continue growing its business.
Petronas posted a 91% jump in yearly profits last year and is currently sitting on a cash balance of RM128.2 billion – up from RM121.4 billion.
The Govt has never paid any money to bail-out 1MDB as 1MDB has been paying off its own debts using its own assets – including financial assets such as the units that the opposition alleges is “worthless”.
After a series of rationalization efforts, 1MDB has cleared all its short-term debts and reduced the total outstanding to about RM30billion. More importantly , all these debts are long-term debts that are due as late as the year 2039 and are matched to the developing assets of TRX and Bandar Malaysia.
This is not like the RM31.5 billion (RM100 billion now) Forex Scandal of Tun Mahathir where the money is gone forever and have no hope for recovery.
Source: Eric See-To
