The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR | Sept 6, 2012
The Selangor state government today said that the MCA’s Datuk Chua Tee Yong is “insinuating” that top audit firm KPMG was incompetent in its audit of the RM392 million Talam Corporation debt recovery exercise.
Yesterday, Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim revealed that KPMG has cleared the state of irregularities in the debt recovery exercise following allegations by MCA that the state government’s dealings with Talam – now known as Trinity Corporation – was lopsided and had ended up costing taxpayers up to RM1 billion.
“After clamouring for independent reports … now Datuk Chua is insinuating that he knows more, or has in his possession more documents than was supplied to KPMG in the audit,” said Tony Pua, a spokesman for the Selangor state government, at a press conference today.
“He is now clearly insinuating that KPMG is not competent in its audit exercise and has taken part in audit fraud by comparing the Talam audit to the mega Enron audit scandal in the United States,” Pua said.
Pua was referring to Chua’s tweets on microblogging site Twitter, where the Labis MP had said: “Audit report depends on scope of the work. Enron and a lot of cases show that audit and its results are limited to the documents available”.
Pua said that KPMG was “given access to every document requested to conduct the investigations”.
He also said that “every sen has been collected back” from Talam, in reference to the RM392million debt that was owed to Selangor state subsidiaries.
The two other spokesmen for Khalid’s administration — PAS’s Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad and PKR’s William Leong — were also present at the press conference.
The trio are challenging Chua to a debate on the issue in Labis this Sunday.
They also said Chua, the deputy minister of agriculture, should focus on recovering the RM250 million federal loan from the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC).
“We ask Chua Tee Yong to do an audit on NFC to let people know. Table a White Paper on NFC in the coming parliamentary session. Show us you’ll do the same,” Leong said.