The Malaysian Insight

CIVIL SERVANTS such as former Treasury secretary-general Irwan Serigar Abdullah, who were paid vast sums just for sitting on the boards of government-linked companies (GLCs) were a thing of the past, Economic Affairs Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali said.

Azmin said cases like Irwan’s, who was on the boards of 23 companies under the Ministry of Finance Inc and had earned nearly RM4 million from the directorships over about seven years, were history.

Irwan’s directorship earnings in 2017 alone came up to RM1.2 million.

“We want the pay or the allowances to the board members to be reasonable because we cannot allow high pay for someone to run the GLCs which belong to the government,” Azmin said told reporters at the Parliament lobby today.

He said there would be no more political appointees to run the GLCs and government-linked investment companies (GLICs).

“That has been decided…  we want professionals to run our GLCs.”

The PKR deputy president also said the Pakatan Harapan government had already removed such political appointees in Tabung Haji and Felda.

“For most of the main GLCs, we have reviewed the membership of the boards – look at Tabung Haji, Felda; we removed the politicians (and replaced them with) professionals to govern and manage the GLCs.”

Irwan was today charged together with former prime minister Najib Razak with six counts of criminal breach of trust involving RM6.63 billion of government funds. 

They were released on a RM1 million bail each.

The charges carry a combined maximum jail term of 120 years, if the sentences were to run consecutively, and a fine. – October 25, 2018.