Speech by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, at the DAP May Day Protest Meeting on EPF Shares Scandal held at TWU hall, Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 30th April 1987 at 5 pm
EPF has lost some $10 million in its investment in Supreme, Grand United and Pan Electric loan stock shares
Malaysia continues to be a nation of scandals, one of which is the EPF shares scandals.
The EPF shares scandal has two facets, the manner the EPF uses the social security funds of the 4.8 million EPF contributors to enter the shares market to jack up share prices and the refusal of the EPF so far to account to the Malaysian working class how it had invested their funds amounting to $24,000 million.
If the government could declassify documents relating to the three controversial projects of Proton Saga, Penang Bridge and Dayabumi, why can’t the EPF make public the list of investments in the stock exchange? Is the EPF afraid that the publication of the list of shares investments with EPF funds would put the EPF in the embarrassing position of unable to justify its shares acquisitions?
The EPF Board and EPF Investment Panel are behaving as if the $24,000 million EPF funds are their private property, forgetting that they are mere trustees of the 4.8 million EPF contributors to whom they have a duty to give full accountability.
The EPF Investment Panel had caused great losses to the EPF funds from their shares acquisitions. For instance, the EPF has lost some $10 million in its investments in the Supreme, Grand United and Pan Electric laon stock shares.
The Auditor-Genereal Report of the 1985 EPF Accounts faulted the EPF Investment Panel for infringing the 1951 EPF Act in directly investing $18.86 million in non-trustee stocks. For 1985, EPF would have lost a further $10 million from this direct investment in non-trustee stocks.
1985 was a very mysterious year for the EPF, for a lot of improprieties and irregularities in the stewardship of EPF funds occurred in that year. There was the EPF-Makuwasa scandal, where EPF lost some $10 million in the sale of shares to the $2 company, Makuwasa Securities Sdn. Bhd., it was also that year where the EPF contributed $30 million to a hush-hush government operation to jack up shares prices through a body known as the Investment Co-ordinating Committee (ICC) which also commanded funds from Socso, Sports Toto and Bank Simpanan Nasional.
DAP to consider legal action against EPF for its illegal and improper use and investment of EPF monies
The legality and propriety of many of there EPF transactions is highly in doubt. If the EPF continues with its refusal to five accountability to the 4.8 million contributors on how it had used and invest EPF monies, the DAP will seriously consider instituting legal action against the EPF.
Workers must insist and assert their right in know how their EPF funds are being used and invested, and a Government which denies this right of the workers cannot claim to be open, accountable, clean., efficient or trustworthy.