The Malaysian Insight

THE Penang exco is contemplating legal action after it was accused of receiving kickbacks from the the consortium building the undersea tunnel and three major road projects, said Chow Kon Yeow.

The chief minister said they would wait for the authorities to finish investigations before taking action.

“We reserve the right to take legal action in the future, if the need arises. We are still looking at the issue.

“But since a report has been lodged, we will wait for the authorities to finish their investigations,” he told a press conference at Komtar today.

The claims of bribery recently surfaced in a series of posts titled “From the MACC files” on the Malaysia Today website run by controversial blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin.

The posts said that Consortium Zenith Constructions Sdn Bhd senior executive officer Zarul Ahmad Mohd Zulkifli had paid former chief minister Lim Guan Eng; Chow, who was formerly the traffic mitigation exco; and several other excos tens to hundreds of thousands of ringgit at their Komtar offices.

The blog also posted “leaked” statements Zarul had purportedly given to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission when he was previously investigated over allegations of graft.

In part four of the series, a page from the “leaked” statement stated that Chow received RM50,000 in April 2013.

MACC has since lodged a police report over the alleged leaked statements, while Zarul and Lim had rubbished the corruption claims.

Last week, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad also said the claims were lies.

Chow said he was sad to see his name mentioned in graft allegations for the first time in his political career of 32 years.

“We have had discussions on what we could do about the allegations, such as lodging police reports, filing court cases, or waiting for the investigation to be completed and other parties to issue denials.

“At the moment, Zenith has made its stand clear, while MACC has lodged a police report.

“We must also remember the person who made these allegations is in the UK. It is not so easy to sue him, unless we file our cases there,” he said.

Chow said he was never called up by MACC when the anti-graft agency started to officially investigate the undersea tunnel and roads project in 2017 and 2018.

“I don’t know about the investigation,” he said, but added that he knew about Zarul previously receiving a letter from MACC informing him there would be no further action. – March 6, 2019.