UNAUTHORISED use of money means it is “stolen”, a DAP MP said of a parliamentary committee’s findings that the Barisan Nasional (BN) government had dipped into an account meant for Goods and Services Tax (GST) refunds due to an income shortfall.

Bandar Kuching MP Kelvin Yii said Barisan Nasional had no right to use money meant for the refunds, and this is similar to theft.

“This shows that a law has been broken, and money that is meant for refund had been used by the government to pay for its expenses due to shortfall in income,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

“That’s like ‘stolen’ because the government has no rights over the cash which by law it has to be put into the trust for refunds,” said the 33-year-old lawmaker.

“The point is, a law was broken and the BN government dipped its fingers into money that did not belong to it, regardless of the justifications made.”

Yii was commenting on The Malaysian Insight’s report that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) had concluded that money meant for GST refunds was not “missing” or “stolen” as first said by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng last year, but had been used to cover the government’s shortfall in revenue.

Lim’s remarks, which were made in Dewan Rakyat last August, led to Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin lodging a police report over the claims and the PAC to investigate the matter.

Yii said that Section 54(2) of the GST Act 2014 states that all revenues must be placed in the trust account where either all or a portion of the money can be then moved to the consolidated account with the Finance Ministry’s approval.

“But Customs Department’s statement on December 5, 2018 said all the GST revenue was placed in the consolidated account without the ministry’s approval.

“It was further reported that the consolidated account only had RM450 million on April 30, 2018. This was insufficient to be transferred to the trust account for GST refunds.” – July 11, 2019.