Assets feud: Dr M claims Anwar accused of cronyism when DPM

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his predecessor Dr Mahathir Mohamad continue to trade barbs over the issue of assets despite a legal suit pending in court.

Mahathir asked Anwar to declare how much he was worth when he served as his deputy prime minister from 1993 to 1998, claiming the latter was among the “past leaders” accused of cronyism.

He was responding to Anwar reiterating his call on Mahathir to reveal how much the nonagenarian and his family are worth, which is now the subject of an RM150 million defamation suit.

Expressing puzzlement over Anwar’s actions, Mahathir said: “Apparently, leaders of the past enriched themselves through corruption and he (Anwar) has dozens of boxes (of evidence). If so, reveal them and charge (these leaders).”

Instead of hauling these leaders to court, Mahathir said the prime minister is asking them to declare their assets and to use their personal wealth to aid the poor.

“Anwar is one of those past leaders accused of helping cronies.

“Reveal your wealth when you were deputy prime minister and help the people with your own money, not government funds,” he added on Twitter this evening.

Since Anwar claimed to have knowledge of his wealth, Mahathir said there is no need for him to make a public declaration.

“Show the evidence in court and the public will know how much I am worth. There is no need for me to declare, but Anwar must declare,” he added.

Prior to the last general election, Anwar, who is also Pakatan Harapan chairperson, declared a net asset of RM11.18 million.

He declared RM828,667.83 in cash assets and RM10.35 million in real estate properties.

Mahathir, 97, and Anwar, 75, have been embroiled in a bitter feud spanning more than two decades ever since the former sacked the latter in 1998.

There was a brief hiatus when the pair joined hands in the 2018 general election to oust then-prime minister, Najib Abdul Razak. MKINI

Mahathir squandered RM100 billion says new book

The summary of the book , Malaysian Maverick – Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, from Malaysiakini is as follows:

According to Barry Wain, author of the soon-to-be launched ‘Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times’, direct financial losses amounted to about RM50 billion.

This doubled once the invisible costs, such as unrecorded write-offs, were taken into account. The RM100 billion total loss was equivalent to US$40 billion at then prevailing exchange rates.

Barry, who is a former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, says most of the scams, which included a government attempt to manipulate the international tin price and gambling by Bank Negara on global currency markets, occurred in the 1980s.

‘Malaysian Maverick’ is the first independent, full-length study of Mahathir, who retired in 2003 after more than two decades as premier. The book will be published globally next week by Palgrave Macmillan.

Wain writes that the Mahathir administration, which took office in 1981 with the slogan, “clean, efficient, trustworthy”, was almost immediately embroiled in financial scandals that “exploded with startling regularity”.

By the early 1990s, he says, cynics remarked that it had been “a good decade for bad behaviour, or a bad decade for good behaviour”.

Secret military deal with US

The book also reveals that:

– Mahathir, despite his nationalistic rants, signed a secret security agreement with the United States in 1984 that gave the Americans access to a jungle warfare training school in Johor and allowed them to set up a small-ship repair facility at Lumut and a plant in Kuala Lumpur to repair C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.

– Mahathir used a secret fund of his ruling Umno to turn the party into a vast conglomerate with investments that spanned almost the entire economy.

– Mahathir’s Umno financed its new Putra World Trade Centre headquarters in Kuala Lumpur partly with taxpayers money, by forcing state-owned banks to write off at least RM140 million in interest on Umno loans.

Wain, who is now a writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, however credits Mahathir with engineering the country’s economic transformation, deepening industrialisation and expanding Malaysia’s middle class.

But Mahathir had undermined state institutions, permitted the spread of corruption and failed to provide for Malaysia’s future leadership, he says. SOURCE -MKINI – NEW MANDALA

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