PETALING JAYA: A non-governmental organisation has urged the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate news portal The Malaysian Insight (TMI), alleging that there are irregularities in terms of its funding.
“We want MACC to investigate whether the money received by TMI was through corruption or if there is a possibility that the money received from overseas is part of an agenda,” Jaringan Melayu Malaysia (JMM) president Datuk Azwanddin Hamzah said on Friday after lodging a report at the MACC's headquarters in Putrajaya.
Azwanddin was speaking in reference to allegations that RM3mil was given to TMI with no proper transaction records indicating where the money came from.
“We received a complaint from Myaduan Rasuah and also obtained a few documents which we believe were authentic and given by a source in TMI,” he said.
Myaduan Rasuah is a portal managed by JMM.
Azwanddin claimed he had records revealing that the company's funding was mainly from Hong Kong, through a firm called Inside Asia Pte Ltd that was also headed by TMI chief executive officer and editor Jahabar Sadiq.
Azwanddin alleged that the news portal published articles that undermined the Government, defamed the Prime Minister, and threatened the nation's economy.
Jahabar when contacted said it was up to JMM to decide what they wanted to do.
“Those are his allegations. I guess if the authorities want to investigate (and) if anything we do is deemed to be against Malaysian law, (then) I'm sure they will investigate us,” he said.
In a press conference on Thursday (Dec 14), Azwanddin had also alleged that he had documents from the Companies Commission of Malaysia linking TMI to Puan Sri Faridah Begum Abdul Kader, as a director of Inside Media Sdn Bhd, the holding company of TMI.
Faridah is Jahabar's sister and the wife of Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali.
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