Nor Mohd Yakcop should resign or be sacked or suspended as Khazanah Nasional Deputy Chairman if the Cabinet is serious about probe into Bank Negara forex losses in the 1990s
Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop should resign or be sacked or suspended as Khazanah Nasional Bhd Deputy Chairman if the Cabinet is serious about probe into Bank Negara foreign exchange (forex) losses in the 1990s.
This is because Nor Mohamed Yakcop was the chief operator of Bank Negara’s forex speculation which resulted in colossal losses which could total some RM30 billion.
Former Finance Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said when he appeared in court yesterday that Nor Mohamaed Yakcop was complicit in the Bank Negara forex losses in early 1990s when the latter was then a senior Bank Negara official.
He made a revelation when he said that as Finance Minister at the time, he had asked for Nor’s resignation but this was not allowed.
In fact, I had referred to Nor’s role in the Bank Negara forex losses in my speeches in Parliament on the issue in 1993 and 1994, referring to the massive forex speculation by Bank Negara in the forward foreign exchange market where at its height, Bank Negara’s maximum exposure could be in the region of RM270 billion – three times the country’s GDP and more than five times the country’s foreign reserve at the time!
This is what I quoted from a Reuters report in my speech in Parliament in April 1993, with London dealers saying that Bank Negara “was by far the biggest market player, trading foreign exchange volume vastly in excess of any other in the market”:
“Over the past two years it has stepped up its trading volume, and this year it has started dealing in what dealer described as ‘really massive amounts’….
“Typically, Bank Negara operates in US$50 million lots, compared with the market norm of US$5 million or US$10 million and deals with maybe six major banks in Europe and six in New York, dealers said.
“One trader said the only dealers rivaling Bank Negara would be Japanese funds.
“But while these funds enter the market no more than once or twice a year, Bank Negara is coming in and doing yards (billions) of dollars in a day.
“Its recent technique has been to hit major banks for US$50 million each, then hit them 10 minutes later, dealers said.
“Then it changes centre and does it all over again.”
More than 20 years have elapsed, but Nor Mohd Yakcop, who was the chief operator in the Bank Negara forex speculation in the early 1990s and the person responsible for the Bank Negara’s colossal losses, owes it to the nation and Malaysians to make a clean breast of what he did more than two decades ago – and not just to the Cabinet special task force.
I stand by my speech in Parliament in April 1994 calling for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the colossal Bank Negara forex losses, with the following tasks:
- to ascertain whether Bank Negara’s forex losses since 1992 could exceed RM30 billion;
- to ascertain whether there had been any financial malpractices and abuses in view of the inconsistencies and conflicting explanations about the colossal forex losses; and
- to establish as to how the Bank Negara could incur such colossal losses.
However, the Cabinet Ministers yesterday are guilty of three grave misdemeanors when they decided on former Chief Secretary, Tan Sri Sidek Hassan as Chairman of the Special Task Force to probe Bank Negara forex losses more than 20 years ago but dared not do anything about the current and “mother” of all financial scandals in Malaysia, the 1MDB scandal, viz:
- guilty of colossal negligence and irresponsibility of the first degree;
- guilty of craven moral and political cowardice; and
- shown utter lack of Malaysian patriotism when they could be indifferent and unmoved by Malaysia’s infamy and ignominy of being regarded world-wide as a global kleptocracy as a result of the 1MDB scandal.
I am not surprised that the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman dared to challenge me to co-operate with the Special Task Force but dared not take up my counter-challenge – to appoint me as a member of the probe and to include 1MDB and BMF scandals in the probe.