(Petaling Jaya, Wednesday): Malaysiakini reported yesterday that the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) is neither monitoring a recent an Internet website which made serious allegations of corruption and abuses of power against the Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud in his 19-year tenure nor investigating into the various allegations on the website.
One excuse given by the ACA official for this inaction by the ACA was that “our Internet connection is bad and we have difficulties in accessing Internet, let alone the website”.
This is most shocking and the ACA Director-General Datuk Ahmad Zaki Hussin should explain whether this ACA inaction on the serious allegations of corruption and abuses of power against Taib, purportedly supported by numerous documentation on the website, was with his knowledge and consent; if so, to state why.
If not, he should immediately set up a special high-level team to complete investigations within a month into allegations of corruption and abuses of power against Taib Mahmud made by a recent Internet website and make public the findings.
Malaysians still remember that when the former Bank Negara assistant governor Datuk Abdul Murad Khalid made a statutory declaration in October 1999 alleging that the former Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had amassed a fortune of RM3 billion while in government through 20 "Master Accounts", Zaki swung into action and announced that the ACA had set up a special high-level team to investigate into Murad’s allegations against Anwar, claiming that almost every paragraph of Murad’s seven-page statutory declaration contained some information on corruption.
Is Zaki prepared to do the same in the case of the serious allegations of corruption and abuses of power made against Taib Mahmud on the Internet website?
In this connection, is it true that the ACA has very bad Internet connection and has difficulties in accessing Internet, as claimed by the ACA official who spoke to Malaysiakini. This is very serious as it makes nonsense of the invitation by ACA to Malaysians to report corruption to ACA through the Internet!
As Taib had claimed in a recent interview with Bernama that he had been “the fairest chief minister around” and denied and condemned allegations of corruption made against him, is the Sarawak Chief Minister prepared to extend full co-operation to the ACA on its high-level investigations into the corruption allegations made against him on the Internet website so that they could be concluded within a month and the full results made public in time for the Sarawak state general elections?
(7/2/2001)