by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjong, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, September 8, 1994:
Cancellation of boycott of British companies timed to allow them to bid for the RM10 billon Kuala Lumpur International Airport project in Sepang.
At the end of July, the British and Malaysian press featured the Standard Chartered Bank gold coin scandal involving the missing US$10,000 Mocatta gold coin after being handed to the then Deputy Finance Minister, Ghani Osman, in 1991.
I said at the time that the new gold coin scandal had affected the restoration of normal trading relations between Britain and Malaysia and the calling-off of the Malaysian Govern¬ment boycott of all British companies with regard to Malaysian contracts and privatisation projects.
If not for the golden coin episode, the Malaysian Government would have called off its boycott of British companies at any time then.
However, I was confident, as I told a press conference in Alor Star on July 26, that despite the golden coin episode, that it would not seriously affect the normalisation of relations between the Malaysian Government, and the British companies and I predicted, that such normalisation would be announced latest by October, this year.
I have now been proved right, with the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, yesterday that the Cabinet had lifted the ban on the participation of British firms in new government contracts.
There is no doubt that the lifting of the ban on British companies has been timed to allow them to bid for the RM10 billion Kuala Lumpur International Airport project in Se¬pang, which would be calling for tenders for its construction next month.
Although the Cabinet has lifted the boycott of British companies, the Government has not given a satisfactory explana¬tion of the various allegations of abuses of power, financial improprieties and even corrupt practices made against Malaysian government leaders in various British mass media reports.
These reports and allegations cannot be left unrebutted and DAP calls on the Government to table a White Paper in Parliament to answer all these British mass media allegations.