IMDB Confusion

Sin Chew Jit Poh

11 March 2015

 

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Economics is not something that I am good at. I studied it in school and it was torture. Even today, if I had to start a business, it would probably go bankrupt within a week.

 

It comes as no surprise then that I am totally lost when it comes to the IMDB affair. Or the more recent scandal involving Felda buying a hotel in the heart of London.

 

One of the problems I have is the sheer amount of money involved. When you are talking about billions of ringgit, I have difficulty in imagining such sums. I think my brain kinds of shuts down and I lose sight of the implications of a scandal involving that amount of money.

 

The government says that the finances of IMDB is above board. The opposition disagrees. The thing is if you gave me the report from the auditing company hired by the government or the reams of documents that the Sarawak Report has uncovered, I still won’t be able to make heads or tails of it.

 

Maybe I am just stupid.

 

But I will still like to know what is really happening. This is because tax payers’ money is involved and that means it is our money.

 

So this is what I would like to learn in clear simple language.

 

Just what exactly was done by IMDB that was unlawful or unethical?

 

Who did this?

 

Who stood to benefit from it?

 

If there was wrong doing, then what are its implications to the people of Malaysia?

 

Now there is a special task force consisting of the MACC, the police and the AG’s Chambers and they are supposed to investigate this affair. Apparently even the Prime Minister will be subject to their scrutiny.

 

In a perfect world this would be comforting news. Unfortunately as I have pointed out before, there is a serious problem of trust in our institutions. This means that even though logically speaking the three bodies are the natural agencies to investigate this scandal, I am sorry but even after they have done their job I am just not confident that I will be any clearer on the issues nor will I be satisfied with the findings. I hope the task force proves me wrong.