Liew: I did not misuse RM3.5mil

Datuk Liew Vui Keong. -Star filepic

KOTA KINABALU: Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong (pic) has denied claims that he misspent RM3.5mil from 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) credited into his former party’s, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), account in 2013.

Liew said no money in the party’s accounts had been misspent and all transactions were recorded in the accounting books, which were subsequently audited after acceptance and approval by the party’s delegates from 2006 to 2012.

The ousted LDP president, who left the party earlier this year and is now permanent chairman of the ruling Parti Warisan Sabah, said he had no knowledge of what happened to the party’s monies from 2013 onwards as he was no longer the party’s president then.

“There were still monies left in the party’s account when I was suspended as a member and unconstitutionally removed as the party chief in October 2013,” he said.

Liew said former party president and state Special Tasks Minister Datuk Teo Chee Kang and the current LDP acting president Datuk Chin Su Phin would be accountable from the moment they suspended him from office in 2013 and seized the monies in the bank’s account without his knowledge.

“How can I have access to the office when they locked it?

“They even changed my signatory in the bank without my knowledge and took away all the party’s files, statements of account and other related documents,” he said in a statement issued yesterday from London.

Liew was with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on the second leg of the Prime Minister’s working visit to Britain after the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week.

Liew’s response came after a blogger known as steadyaku47.com claimed that former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had issued two cheques for RM3.5mil under LDP’s name in 2013.

The blog writer alleged that Liew, the LDP president then, had pressured and forced the party’s treasurer to co-sign the cheques and cashed them without the know­ledge of other members.

The claims by the blogger were deemed as factual after Chin claimed that the party secretary-general had given a similar statement to the police investigating 1MDB two weeks ago.

Liew said whoever the secretary-general was who gave the statement to the police had no knowledge of the matter and believed it based on hearsay and speculation.

He said the accusation that he had pressured and forced the then treasurer-general Ken Fong was simply unbelievable.

“It shows the extent of lies they are willing to go just to achieve their vicious agenda,” he said.

He added that all withdrawals of monies from the party’s account would require the compulsory signature of the treasurer with other signatories – either the president or the secretary-general, who was Teo at the time.

“I was LDP’s chief for seven years from 2006 to 2013, and there was no way it could be run without political funding as everyone would know,” said Liew, adding that when he lost the Sandakan parliamentary seat in 2013, LDP ousted him as president.