MALAYSIAN Anti-Corruption Commission officers today visited the Sungai Lembu village to talk to locals about an illegal carbon filter-processing factory that has been operating in the area for about 10 years. 

Village security and development committee head Tan Sing Lee, the director of a poultry farm, and the owner of a pineapple farm next door to the factory were told to record their statements at the MACC office in Butterworth this afternoon. 

Tan said he was told earlier this morning that the officers were going to speak to them, but were later served a written order to present themselves at the MACC office for their statements to be recorded. 

“They could have taken our statements here but after they saw that reporters were around, they said we had to go to their office,” he said. 

Sungai Lembu JKKK secretary Yeo Keng Chuan said he would accompany Tan. 

The MACC officers spent almost an hour talking to Tan and two others at a coffee shop in the village. 

Reporters were there for press conference called by DAP leader Lim Kit Siang, who had arrived at the village an hour before the MACC officers. 

Lim and his DAP colleagues had briefly stopped at the village during a a tour of Kulim’s coffee shop. 

MACC is probing the factory owners and Penang exco Phee Boon Poh, who wrote letters in 2015 and last year asking for enforcement action against the factory to be deferred. 

Phee is accused of using his position to seek gratification, a claim he and the Penang administration have strongly rejected. 

Phee, who was in MACC custody from last Friday to Monday, is on sick leave until the coming Monday. 

Residents have complained that the illegal factory is causing air pollution. MACC and other federal authorities raided the factory a day before MACC arrested Phee and the manager and the director of the factory to assist in investigations. – August 18, 2017.