PUTRAJAYA: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad yesterday questioned Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak over his alleged failure to raise the issue of Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) foreign exchange (forex) losses when Najib was a member of the cabinet in 1993, noting that the matter was brought up at a parliamentary session then. “Najib should explain why he is only raising this issue now, when before this there was no mention of it (and) he had approved everything [relating] to this,” the former prime minister told reporters after testifying at the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the BNM forex losses. Dr Mahathir claimed that the questions that were put to him during yesterday’s hearing were “not relevant” and were more of a tactic to smear his name. At the hearing itself, Dr Mahathir said: “From time to time, without answering specific questions — questions raised by myself, Najib Razak has raised all sorts of irrelevant issues in order to smear my credibility — just so that the Malaysian public are distracted from the turmoil caused by Najib Razak,” Dr Mahathir said during his testimony. “It has been 25 years since the forex losses occurred yet Najib via his ‘helpers’ have succeeded in setting up the RCI in less than 25 days, following former assistant BNM governor Datuk Abdul Murad Khalid’s revelation to the media regarding the forex losses,” he added.

Source: The Edge Markets September 19, 2017 02:26 UTC