KUALA LUMPUR: Strategic investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) will focus on monetising its assets and delivering value directly to its shareholders, said its president and group executive director Arul Kanda Kandasamy in an exclusive interview with the BBC.
Speaking to BBC's Asia business correspondent Karishma Vaswani, Arul made it clear that the sovereign wealth fund would not be entangled in a war of words with “politicians and former politicians”, despite the negative public perception cast on it.
“Perceptions, I agree, are poor. And a lot of effort needs to be made to fix that.
“I am not a politician; I am a business guy and my job is to ensure we get to monetise (1MDB’s) assets in a way that delivers the best value to the shareholders,” Arul said in a three-minute video interview published on BBC’s website today.
Arul dismissed claims of any wrongdoing in 1MDB, saying that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had found no evidence to support the allegations leveled against the fund.
Arul also said 1MDB had consistently maintained that no funds from the investment fund were ever transferred into the accounts of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
“The MACC has clearly stated that no funds from 1MDB went into the private accounts of the prime minister. This is a fact.
“And the MACC has also clearly stated the source of the funds (was) from a private donor in the Middle East,” he said.
The fund has drawn flak for missing payments on the US$11 billion (RM48.41 billion) it owes to banks and bondholders.
The spotlight fell on 1MDB after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a series of reports detailing alleged dubious activity involving the fund.
The US newspaper published two articles between July and August, one of which claimed that US$700 million (RM3.08 billion) was deposited into the prime minister’s accounts.