PUTRAJAYA has a weak case against Anwar Ibrahim in the Bank Negara Malaysia forex losses as two key players who could shed light on the matter did not testify, the opposition leader’s lawyers said tonight. 

The witnesses are the late central bank governor Jaffar Hussein, who died in 1998, and former auditor-general Ishak Tadin, 85, who was too infirmed to testify during the two-month hearing which ended on September 19.

A royal commission of inquiry, tasked with investigating the losses and led by Petronas chairman Mohd Sidek Hassan, presented its findings to Yang di-Pertuan Agong on October 13. The 500-page report was tabled in Parliament today. 

“The report suffers from this serious lack of clear evidence from the key players: the inevitable consequence of holding an inquiry some 25 years after the event,” Anwar’s Gurdial Singh Nijar and Sivarasa Rasiah said in a statement. 

The RCI found Anwar and former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to be culpable for the losses, which the commission concluded to have reached RM31.5 billion between 1992 and 1994. 

The commission further recommended that both men be investigated under Section 417 or 418 of the Penal Code, which carries a sentence of five years and an unlimited fine. Failure to pay the fine can lead to a longer sentence. 

The lawyers, who acted as Anwar’s watching brief during the hearing, said the decision on the buying and selling of shares was made by Jaffar. 

“He made this intention in a public declaration in Delhi. And executed it through his officers. 

“The deputy manager of the jabatan bank at the relevant time testified that the forex trading (that is the buying and selling of shares) was decided by jabatan bank,” the statement said. 

The lawyers said Anwar had explained “at length” why he presented a Bank Negara audited annual report to the cabinet and to Parliament that had been signed off by the auditor-general and the BNM governor.

“Before then, Anwar had been alerted to the dispute between the governor and the auditor-general on how to reflect the losses in the report. He asked the parties to resolve the dispute which they did as reflected in the annual report,” they said.

Anwar also testified that he could not use the information in the auditor-general’s draft criticism and had to use the audited report cleared by the A-G.

“At worst, the presentation of this audited outcome to the cabinet was a judgment call. How then could it be a deception of the cabinet leading to a criminal charge of cheating? It was never called into question by any cabinet member,” they said.

“Additionally, Parliament must be presented the audited annual report. This is precisely what Anwar did. How could this be deceiving Parliament?”

The lawyers added that the forex RCI’s conclusion that Anwar had deceived the cabinet was based on “wrong facts” since he did not decide on the accounting treatment of profit and loss. – November 30, 2017.