“After a long silence, on the 20th of June 1999, Zahid Hamidi admitted that he benefited during Anwar’s tenure as deputy prime minister and finance minister”
Raggie Jessy Rithaudeen
During the 1999 UMNO general assembly, held late in June, the then party youth leader, Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, called for efforts to end corruption, nepotism and cronyism in Malaysia.
The call was said to have been directed at Tun (then Prime Minister Datuk Seri) Dr Mahathir Mohamad, with apparent backing from none other than yours truly, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim – surreptitiously, of course.
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In response, Mahathir struck a bolt from the blue by releasing lists of receipients of various contracts, privatisation opportunities and special Bumiputera allocations of publically listed equity.
The list included Anwar’s father and brother, as well as Zahid himself.
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And you know what?
After a long silence, on the 20th of June 1999, Zahid actually admitted that he benefited during Anwar’s tenure as deputy prime minister and finance minister.
Yes, Zahid did that, and even said; “I was given (by Anwar) business opportunities including shares of companies listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.”
Zahid also said he met Mahathir personally and apologised.
“I apologised to Dr Mahathir for what I had done when I led the party’s Youth wing.
“I pledged my loyalty to Dr Mahathir as prime minister and the president of Umno, the party’s struggles and uphold the party’s dignity.”
Surprised? Oh, don’t be, just read on…
Mahathir’s sons were on the list too, but Mahathir explained that they were only minority shareholders.
“If I want to give to my family, I would certainly have given the biggest share to them.
“As we can see, my children’s names are in the list but they are minority shareholders,” he said.
Anwar’s cronies, on the other hand, had clearly received quite a lot of privatised projects during his tenure as Finance Minister.
“We don’t protest because many people benefited from these projects. As can be seen, the shares were distributed widely,” Mahathir said.
For the record, not only did Anwar fail to challenge Mahathir on these claims, he was silent on the validity of the lists.
Prior to his sacking, Anwar was the Minister of Finance, and he could easily have released damaging evidence against Mahathir.
But all he did was get his minion (Zahid) to talk rubbish during the UMNO general assembly.
In other words, Anwar had nothing.
Mahathir, on the other hand, proved that things were not kosher in Anwar’s alley, and that those accusing him of nepotism and cronyism were themselves directly involved.
Following the release of the lists, Mahathir explained that although the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and Ministry of Finance were involved in the allocation of shares, the Finance Ministry had more power in the selection.
“We thought that between the two ministries, there would be a checking mechanism, but the Finance Minister is more powerful because although MITI makes the decision, it must be referred to the Finance Minister and the decision is made by him.
“The same goes for projects too. We found that after we had decided to award the projects to certain people because their offers appeared good, there were efforts to give part of the projects to certain companies which we knew had connection with the (former) Finance Minister,” he said.
On Anwar’s letter from prison which claimed that the Prime Minister’s son, Mirzan Mahathir, was paid almost RM2 billion by Petronas to acquire his shipping business, Dr Mahathir said:
“Actually it involved a company which he had purchased at a price exceeding RM200 million and subsequently bought over by Petronas at a price of RM42 million. Recently, Petronas reaped a profit of RM200 million from the company purchased from my son.
“For (your) information, they have yet to pay my son. He (Anwar) likes to tell people that he helped my son but actually he did not help,” he said.
Dr Mahathir said he could not complain if his son’s company was purchased at a price which was lower than its actual value because he did not have any say in the matter.
To be continued…
