Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAp Secretary-General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, at the DAP BMF Protest Meeting held at Bukit Mertajam on Thursday, January 9, 1986 at 8 pmMalaysians have a right to demand that they be told the entire story of the $2.5 million BMF loans scandal instead of waiting for a few years for the bits and pieces of the scandal to filter out of the Hong Kong courts
It is now over three years since the $2.5 billion BMF loans scandal crupted publicly, but Malaysians are no nearer to the whole story of the $2.5 nillion BMF loans scandal than three years ago.
As the first connection between BMF and Carrian’s George Tan, was made in 1979, the Full BMF scandal would cover the four years between 1979 till 1982 when the scandal broke open publicly, and the three years since then. This is because the manner the authorities like Bank Bumiputra and the government handled the BMF scandal after it became public in 1982 its itself another big scandal.
This means that we are looking at period covering some six years from 1979 till today.
Malaysians have the right to demand that they be told the entire story of the $2.5 billion BMF loans scandal immediately, instead of waiting for another few years for the bits and pieces of the scandal to filter out of the Hong Kong courts. It is clearly against public national interest for the BMF scandal to be suppressed for another few years, as this would mean that it would be after some 10 years since the beginning of the BMF scandal before Malaysians get to know about its full story.
As all Malaysians do not believe that six BMF directors and officials could commite Bank Bumiputra and $2.5 billion of public funds in their BMF scandal without ‘political approval’ by highly-placed leaders in governmenr, such a 10-year delay would enable these political leaders to escape from justice.
This is why the Ahmad Nordin BMF Inquiry Committee final report should be made public without any more excuse on the government’s part, especially as the three reasons given by the Government against its publication have been proved to be untenable and without basis:
Firstly, the government’s objection that the final report would violate banking secrecy provisions has been anticipated by the Ahmad Nordin BMF Inquiry Committee which even sought Queen’s Couned’s advice on it;
Secondly, the objection that the publication of the BMF final report could prejudice the Hong Kong criminal prosecutions of the BMF culprits is met by the fact that the Hong Kong Attorney-General, who is responsible for the prosecutions, have no objections to the publication;
Thirdly, the fear that the government would be liable to libel or other litigation is answered by my proposal that the BMF final report be presented as a Command Paper in Parliament, which would provide the government with absolute privilege and protection from any legal liability.
I am very disappointed that Barisan Nasional MPs only dare to issue press statements saying that the final report should be published, but dare not make representations to the Prime Minister or demand a meeting of the Barisan Nasional MPs to ask the government to honour its pledge that it has nothing to hide, and would release the BMF reports.