Former auditor-general Tan Sri Madinah Mohamad is seen leaving the Kuala Lumpur High Court March 31, 2022. — Picture by Devan Manuel
KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 — Former auditor-general Tan Sri Madinah Mohamad today told the High Court that her predecessor Tan Sri Ambrin Buang had been reluctant to share more when she asked him about then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s alleged involvement in 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and audit findings on 1MDB.
Madinah, who was the auditor-general from February 2017 to February 2019, said this while testifying as the 12th prosecution witness in the joint trial of Najib and former 1MDB CEO Arul Kanda Kandasamy over the tampering of the 1MDB audit report.
Madinah was referring to a meeting that she had with Ambrin in her office, which she said took place after she had became the new auditor-general and also before she found out in March 2017 that the original audit report on 1MDB had been tampered with.
Madinah said this meeting took place amid a “hush-hush” atmosphere in Malaysia then where the 1MDB issue could not be freely discussed, even as it was a hot topic globally
“This chit chat between Ambrin and me in my room was much much earlier before, I can’t really remember the exact chronology. I asked him specifically and he was reluctant to go deep into it.
“Then I asked ‘what do you think’. Because we were very concerned at that time as auditor-general about these reports that were flying all over the world on 1MDB, but we were rather hush-hush to speak about it in the country. So I asked him,” she explained.
“As auditor-general at that time, with the 1MDB audit report in my possession, with the issues surrounding 1MDB that we had to be aware of, all of us in government, to tread carefully on any issue. The mention of 1MDB, we would rather not mention or speak about it, it was like an understanding among us, that were not to speak about it.
“And this report was in my possession, this 1MDB audit report, so I asked him, what is in the report, because he was the one who conducted the audit, can you tell me, especially concerned about what they said about the prime minister — about his involvement in 1MDB, so that’s why I brought up the subject, because I wanted to hear from him, because he was the auditor-general who conducted the audit. But he was reluctant and he said ‘we cannot verify’, so I left it at that,” she added.
At this point, High Court judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan asked what was it that could not be verified.
Madinah reiterated that she “left it at that” when Ambrin said “we cannot verify”.
Former auditor-general Tan Sri Ambrin Buang is pictured at the Kuala Lumpur High Court August 13, 2020. — Picture by Miera Zulyana
Explaining that as there was no official handover ceremony, Madinah said her meeting as current auditor-general with Ambrin as former auditor-general was due to her wanting to understand whether he had some “amanat” (mandate) or “pesanan” (instructions) or “whether he had areas of interest that he could not finish that he wanted me to complete”.
“And one of the hottest topics, because of the 1MDB audit report, I asked him. And when I asked him to share more — of course I can read it, I can have a briefing, but I wanted to understand from him as the auditor-general what was his final opinion that he formed after conducting the audit, what did he discover, was it true?
“Because this was a matter of national interest, we have a duty to safeguard national interest as the auditor-general, so I needed to understand from him,” she added.
As 1MDB was a “hot topic that everyone was skirting around” and as the National Audit Department (NAD) had conducted an audit on 1MDB, Madinah said questions commonly posed to her as the new auditor-general included what NAD had discovered in its audit on 1MDB.
“So I wanted to understand and hear from Tan Sri Ambrin as the former auditor-general who conducted the audit, what his thoughts were on 1MDB, on the audit. So that’s why I brought this up and I spoke to him, but he was reluctant to share in detail, I don’t know why he was reluctant, but he said ‘you read it yourself, cannot verify’. I understood he was not prepared to share more,” she said, adding that she respected that and so did not ask Ambrin further.
Najib was prime minister from 2009 until May 2018.
Datuk Seri Najib Razak arrives at the Kuala Lumpur High Court March 31, 2022. — Picture by Devan Manuel
Madinah shared what had happened in that meeting with Ambrin, after Najib’s lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah read out an excerpt of what she had told the parliamentary watchdog Public Accounts Committee on December 5, 2018 about the meeting.
Yesterday, Madinah told the court that she was “shocked” when she heard in March 2017 from the NAD’s 1MDB audit team’s coordinator Datuk Nor Salwani Muhammad that Ambrin had been pressured and was given orders in 2016 to amend the 1MDB audit report and that Nor Salwani was ordered to destroy all copies of the original report.
Nor Salwani (who is now deputy auditor-general) kept one copy of the original report which she gave to Madinah as the new auditor-general, and this report which carries a watermark and which Madinah locked up is the one that was produced in court for this trial. The amended copy — where important information was removed — of the 1MDB audit report was the one given to the PAC in March 2016.Shafee today also asked why Madinah did not ask Ambrin about the amendments to the 1MDB audit report after she found out about the existence of the original report.
Madinah then said: “At that time, it’s true I did not believe it necessary to ask Tan Sri Ambrin why this happened, because as I mentioned earlier, I was shocked when it was revealed. I was trying to comprehend why it happened.
“And for me to confront Tan Sri Ambrin on what has already been done will most likely turn out to be very unpleasant. I was the auditor-general then and I felt — that was my thinking at that time — even if I were to confront him and asked him why, I was not sure whether I would get the answers that probably were not necessary,” she said.
Shafee then asked if Madinah “would not know how cooperative or what would be his answer if you never asked him”, she agreed by saying “I would not know”.
Madinah disagreed with Shafee’s suggestion that she was being “dishonest” by not confronting then prime minister Najib about the amendments to the original 1MDB audit report after she discovered it in March 2017.
Madinah also disagreed with Shafee’s suggestion that she did not confront then prime minister Najib in order to protect her tenure as auditor-general.
Shafee also suggested that Madinah had gone to see then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 2018 about the 1MDB audit report as she realised that other civil servants such as the chief secretary to the government were all “getting the chop” and she wanted to protect her tenure as auditor-general, saying: “You became another Nor Salwani in order to curry favour.”
But Madinah disagreed with this suggestion.
Former 1Malaysia Development Bhd chief executive officer Arul Kanda Kandasamy arrives at the Kuala Lumpur High Court March 31, 2022. — Picture by Devan Manuel
Today, Madinah also said it was in 2018 that Nor Salwani told her she has a recording of the February 24, 2016 meeting (where Ambrin was allegedly pressured into having amendments made to the original 1MDB audit report) in a hard disk, and that Nor Salwani had said many parts of the recording were not clear.
Madinah, who was formerly secretary-general of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation under which government agency CyberSecurity Malaysia is parked under, said she had then took the recording to be given to CyberSecurity’s forensics lab to transcribe.
“They transcribed it, they took a long time, they took more than a month or two, so I didn’t have the privilege, because I was finishing my contract as auditor-general, so I did not have time to read the transcript, the transcript was never in my possession, so I did not have the transcript with me,” she said.
Madinah was explaining why she had relied on the 1MDB audit team’s briefing to her — instead of the recording’s transcript — when she testified to the PAC on December 5, 2018 during the PAC’s inquiry on the auditor-general’s 2016 audit report on 1MDB.
While Shafee repeatedly tried to challenge the accuracy of Madinah’s testimony to the PAC and claiming that it was based on “hearsay” from Nor Salwani, Madinah stood her ground by saying that Nor Salwani’s account of the February 2016 events — including on how Ambrin had been pressured — were reaffirmed by two other NAD officials who were in the 1MDB audit team.
The two other officials are Nadhirah Abdul Wahab and Farizah Harman.
In the subsequent briefings from Nor Salwani about the matter, Madinah said the other two were also present and they did not object to Nor Salwani’s account.
“What they told me and the circumstances under which Tan Sri Ambrin was pressured to make those amendments, what he said when he came out of the meeting room, what Nafisah told them when she came out of the meeting room, were exactly as what I have informed the PAC,” she said.
“When I was given the briefing by Nor Salwani as I mentioned earlier, Nadhirah and Farizah were present, they corroborated each others’ information to me, I had no reason to disbelieve or doubt them, that was exactly what I felt at that moment, because I asked them many times,” she later said about her PAC testimony.
Asked by Shafee on her PAC testimony in December 2018 where she said in the Malay language that “additionally, 1MDB investigations involve the PM, so even more we cannot show the results of the audit to PM”, Madinah said this was what the 1MDB audit team — Nor Salwani together with the other two — had informed her.
When Shafee tried to suggest this statement was inaccurate as then attorney general Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali had in January 2016 “cleared” then prime minister Najib of wrongdoings, Madinah explained that the 1MDB audit team officials had “still mentioned the same thing” when she asked during the discussions about the matter.
Shafee today also cross-examined Najib’s former principal private secretary Tan Sri Shukry Mohd Salleh who is the 11th prosecution witness in this trial.
The trial is expected to resume tomorrow, with former 1MDB chairman and the 13th prosecution witness Tan Sri Mohd Bakke Salleh will continue testifying.