Another RM870,000 and gems recovered as safes are opened

KOTA KINABALU: Graft investigators are still amazed at why two top officials of the Sabah Water Department kept a whopping RM53.7mil cash with them as the wealth continued to pour out of bank safe deposit boxes.

An additional RM870,000 in cash and a large amount of jewellery were recovered yesterday after Malaysian Anti-Corruption Com­mis­sion (MACC) investigators opened the last of the boxes.

The MACC is expected to call jewellers to assist in estimating the value of the jewellery recovered.

The investigators, who have been questioning the director Ag Tahir Ag Talip and his deputy Teoh Chee Kong for the past 72 hours, have yet to get answers on the source of cash found in both their houses and offices.

“We don’t know yet. We are recording their statements but we still have not established how and why they had such a large of amount of money,” an MACC investigator said on condition of anonymity.

Sources said the designer watches seized have also yet to be valued.

The 127 property and land titles found at the deputy director’s house might easily be worth over RM60mil in conservative estimates, the sources said.

“At the end of the investigations, we might be looking at between RM200mil and RM300mil in total,” the source added.

The two are under investigations for alleged abuse of power, kickbacks and money laundering in connection with RM3.3bil worth of contracts for federal-funded pro­jects given out by the Water Department in Sabah since 2010.