MANY were shocked when Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Khazanah Nasional Berhad was set up to help Bumiputeras, said the sovereign wealth fund’s former managing director Mohd Sheriff Mohd Kassim. 

He said they wondered what Dr Mahathir’s intention was when the prime minister said Khazanah had strayed from its original mission.

“In fact when, Tun (Dr) Mahathir came up with the statement we were all surprised and wondered what his intention was or whether somebody has been feeding some new ideas to him,” he told a forum organised by the Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute (ASLI) in Petaling Jaya today. 

He said a meeting was then held between Khazanah’s then managing director Azman Mokhtar and the prime minister. 

Sheriff  was responding to Edge Media Group chief executive officer Ho Kay Tat, who said Khazanah was never set up to help Bumiputera entrepreneurs. 

“When Tun (Dr) Mahathir said Khazanah deviated from it’s role because it is supposed to help Bumiputera entrepreneurs, frankly I don’t know where it was coming from because Khazanah was never set up for that purpose. 

“There were other agencies that were supposed to help develop Bumiputera entrepreneurs. 

“When Tun said that, there was some concern whether it was an indication that the government wants to sell some of these assets back to entrepreneurs,” he said. 

In July last year, Dr Mahathir said Khazanah, which is one of the biggest local players in the stock market, was supposed to hold shares allocated to Bumiputeras.

These allocations are under an affirmative action policy to increase Bumiputera equity in the stock market.

“But along the way, Khazanah decided that it should take on the shares for itself.

“Why not buy if there are good shares at the time of listing when the price of shares was very low,” Dr Mahathir had said in an interview with business website Investvine.

Sheriff was Khazanah’s founding managing director in 1994 until his retirement in 2003.

Azman took the helm of Khazanah in 2004, until he stepped down last year. He and the entire Khazanah board had resigned after Dr Mahathir  made the remarks. – March 12, 2019.