By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Wednesday, 4.7.1984:
DAP calls on Bank Bumiputra to come clean and disclose everything on the BMF loans scandal in Hong Kong, whether to BMF auditors or to the Malaysian public
Bank Bumiputra yesterday took objectives to certain reservations raised by the auditors of Bumiputra Malaysia Finance, Touche Ross and Co. in Hong Kong, regarding the BMF accounts for 1983.
The objections raised by Bank Bumiputra do not seen to be valid or sound.
One of the auditor’s reservations is which regard to the consultancy fees’ as disclosed by the Prime Minister in his press conference in October 1983. Bank Bumiputra said that this was a matter which was beyond the BMF board to resolve.
Surely, if BMF board directions had receives ‘consultancy fees’ for their association or work on BMF, the auditors are entitled to the full facts; and if the ‘consultancy fees’ had been ^ camouflaged in the Bank-Bumiputra BMF accounts, it should not be too difficult either for Bank Bumiputra or the BMF to give a full accounting of them to the auditors.
With regard to the auditors’ request for presentation from the Committee of Inquiry into the affairs of BMF headed by the Auditor-General, Tan Sri Ahmad Nordin, this is not too unreasonable a request, as the committee is an in-house inquiry set up by Bank Bumiputra into BMF. I would have thought that the BMF Committee of Inquiry would have welcomed the opportunity to have the closest co-operation with the BMF’s auditors in Hong Kong to get to the root of the BMF loans scandal in Hong Kong.
The BMF’s auditors’ qualification on the 1983 reports shows that the BMF and Bank Bumiputra has failed to co-operate fully with the auditors. Thus, the auditors had said that their audit report on the BMF 1983 accounts on Jund 30, 1984 is expected to be revised on the basis of additional audit procedures and review of additional information, implying that the BMF had not co-operated fully in furnishing all relevant and pertinent information and data for a clean audit certificate to be produced.
For the first time, Bank Bumiputra has decided to take the offensive by making public the BMF auditor’s report, even before the Bank Bumiputra Annual General Meeting, for the obvious reason of putting the blame on the unreasonableness of the BMF auditors and diverting attention from the failure of BMF and Bank Bumiputra to come out clean on the entire BMF loans scandal.
In the public interest, the people of Malaysia want Bank Bumiputra and BMF to co-operate fully with the BMF auditors, the Committee of Inquiry into BMF headed by the Auditor-General, and to stop playing games in seeking to hide as much as possible of the BMF scandal from public knowledge.
The DAP therefore calls on Bank Bumiputra and BMF to come out clean and disclose everything about the BMF loans scandal in Hong Kong, whether to BMF auditors, the Committee of Inquiry or to the Malaysian public.