After going through a copy of the Summary Report by PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC), the Ipoh Timur MP expressed his surprise over the “various financial scandals” at Pempena.
Speaking to reporters at the parliament lobby yesterday, Lim said he planned to lodge a police report over the “looting of people’s money carried out by a few officials using tourism as a front”.
The issue of Pempena’s losses and poor handling was first highlighted by Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said in parliament on Nov 6. Using the PwC report as her reference, the minister told of how only “a handful of the 24 companies related to Pempena had profits or positive shareholders’ funds as at June 2008”.
Azalina had said that Pempena had invested RM54 million via equity participation and advances in these companies from March 1997 to November 2007.
In the report, PwC suggested that should Pempena exit from five companies, its immediate impact would be an estimated loss of RM20 million.
The audit, said Lim, also revealed that out of the 24 companies under Pempena, six did not have financial information while three had partial information. “It would appear that not just incompetence and ineptitude but criminal breach of trust and even corruption are in play.”
“Some of these companies operated as if there were no norms or rules to govern them. Some of the people running them considered the companies to be their own fiefdoms, drawing monies through dubious means.”
The PwC report, he added, said Pempena bought one million shares at RM1 each in SD Corp Sdn Bhd, which had forecast a turnover of RM8 million and a profit of RM100,000 for the first year. “But the company ran up a loss of RM2 million. To add insult to injury, Pempena paid RM2.1 million for the shares but the share certificates had yet to be delivered as of July 31,” said Lim.
More shocking were claims that minutes of Pempena’s board of directors’ meetings had been changed, said Lim.
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