KUALA LUMPUR: The former chairman of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) today revealed that the 2016 Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on issues faced by the sovereign wealth fund did not reflect what he had exposed then in its entirety.
Tan Sri Mohd Bakke Salleh dropped the bombshell while testifying in Datuk Seri Najib Razak's trial involving the misappropriation of 1MDB funds, today.
The 68-year old corporate figure, who is now Petronas chairman, said a lot of what he had revealed to the PAC then had been omitted from the report which was later made public.
He spoke out about the issue after a tense exchange with Najib's lead counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah when the senior counsel pressed Bakke about the PAC report.
Shafee insisted that Bakke reply with a yes or no when asked whether he stood by what he had told the PAC.
However, Bakke replied that he needed to explain further as a yes or no answer would not reflect what had actually transpired when he spoke to the PAC.
At this juncture High Court Judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah intejected and explained that Bakke should answer Shafee's question and that he would be given an opportunity to put things into perspective during re-examination by the prosecution.
Bakke then replied with a yes, and said while he stood by the statements he had given to the PAC, not everything that he had revealed was captured in the report.
"I realised that a lot of the statements which I gave to the PAC were not printed in the report which was published.
"What I said is not represented in its entirety in the report. How it was reported and the way what I said was presented...I had no control over PAC," he said.
It was previously reported that the 106-page PAC report on 1MDB in 2016 did not implicate Najib in the 1MDB scandal.
Instead, it pointed blame on the wealth fund management, specifically its former chief executive Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi for mismanagement.
Among the weaknesses identified in the report included the 1MDB management's failure to invest without any due diligence being conducted, namely pumping in US$1 billion in a joint venture with PetroSaudi International Limited (PSI) within just eight days after first meeting about it.
Shafee is expected to continue cross examining Bakke tomorrow.
