Datuk Seri Najib Razak is pictured at the Kuala Lumpur High Court in Kuala Lumpur March 30, 2022. — Picture by Firdaus Latif
KUALA LUMPUR, March 30 — Former auditor-general Tan Sri Madinah Mohamad said the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) matter was an official secret that could not be raised even in government meetings in the past, when explaining why she did not declassify the untampered version of a 1MDB audit report and did not raise it to then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
Madinah, who was the auditor-general from February 2017 to February 2019, said this while testifying as the 12th prosecution witness in the joint trial of Najib and former 1MDB CEO Arul Kanda Kandasamy over the tampering of the 1MDB audit report.
The trial is over the alleged tampering of the auditor-general’s finalised 1MDB audit report, which was meant to be given to parliamentary watchdog Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on February 24, 2016, but was amended before being given to the PAC in March 2016.
It was in March 2017 that Madinah as the new auditor-general was told by the National Audit Department’s 1MDB audit team coordinator Datuk Nor Salwani Muhammad of the existence of the original copy that was initially meant to be given to PAC and the last surviving copy which she did not destroy.
Madinah said she was “shocked” to find out that her predecessor Tan Sri Ambrin Buang was ordered to amend the report and that Salwani was ordered to destroy all original copies.
Today, Najib’s lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah repeatedly asked why Madinah did not raise the issue of the original copy of the 1MDB audit report and its having been amended to the “higher-ups” or then prime minister Najib.
With Najib still the prime minister from March 2017 until the May 2018 elections, Shafee said Madinah did nothing and suggested she had “ample time to lodge a police report to bring it up to the attention of someone higher-up”.
“At that time, as I have mentioned and I have repeated this in my answer, it was under OSA (Official Secrets Act), there was no further activity under 1MDB,” Madinah replied.
Shafee then suggested that Madinah as the auditor-general then could have declassified the 1MDB audit report for the limited purpose of briefing the prime minister, but Madinah said she did not see the need to do so at that time.
“I would not have, at that time, because since 1MDB was an OSA-ed report, the whole thing is OSA, we were not allowed to talk about 1MDB, we could not even mention 1MDB in any of our meetings.
“And as I mentioned, I did not have the opportunity to deep dive into the original report, therefore how could I have thought about declassifying the 1MDB audit report in order to bring it higher up,” she said.
Shafee: Your suggestion that everything about 1MDB is secret is total nonsense. The whole world is talking about 1MDB and yet you auditor-general, you say it is an official secret, can’t talk about it, can’t do anything about it, can’t whisper about it?
Madinah: That was it at that time.
Shafee: The whole world was talking about 1MDB.
Madinah: Not in the country.
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