KWAP Questions

• 21 July 2017
• 0 comments

For a pension fund this size it would seem both reasonable and prudent to ensure that account details are both up to date and publicly available. After all many Malaysians believe, with varying degrees of justification, that they will one day qualify for a pension from this fund.

Why then are the latest published financial details about KWAP and its assets, (not to mention, as their website does not, its liabilities), reported to be as at December 2015? Are there no audited figures for the year 2016? Two thirds of the way through 2017 the answer to that question appears to be NO. In any event they have apparently not been published. It is also difficult to discover who, if anyone, are the current auditors of this fund stated to be holding assets at the end of 2015 of more than 118 billion ringgit or 30 billion dollars. Not an inconsiderable sum and way in advance of the plundered 1MDB.

The public in general, and pensioners and potential pensioners in particular, should be alarmed at this strange lack of financial information about their investment. What company having assets of comparable size could get away with having no accounts for 2016 or not publishing them?

This question gains urgency from recent reports that the Australian Bank, ANZ Bank, are pulling out of their investment in the Malaysian Bank AMD, of which they owned a large share, and that KWAP is the buyer. Assuming that this is so, and KWAP management are invited to clarify, why it is buying a bank that allowed a Prime Minister, a salaried person with no known private wealth, to run a current account containing hundreds of millions of ringgit.

Since it has been established that some RM70 million was stolen from the 1MDB subsidiary SRC from money lent by KWAP and filtered into Najib’s AmBank accounts, plus that at least US$170 million US entered another AmBank account owned by Najib (via Julius Baer in Hong Kong) will AMB management, Malaysian or Australian please explain why either or both allowed the existence and operation of an account filled from what can at best be described as unexplained funds? Because the holder was the Prime Minister? That won’t cut much ice when all concerned, ANZ included are sued, and or prosecuted, in this connection; in Malaysia or Australia or both.

Meanwhile in view of all this why are KWAP making this bank purchase? So far they have been strangely silent on so important an initiative. Why?