KOTA BARU: 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) chief executive officer Arul Kanda Kandasamy has invited DAP leaders to a townhall session will be held in Penang on Thursday to explain issues with regards to the government's strategic investment arm.
“DAP leaders, who have all this while been spreading false information regarding 1MDB, should make it a point to attend the session.
“This is a good opportunity for them (and the public) to ask any question. I am not afraid to answer. We want to tell them the real story.
“I hope they (DAP leaders) will attend. After hearing our explanation, I am sure that they will never play with the 1MDB issue again to cause confusion among the people,” he told a Press conference following a townhall session organised by the Kota Baru Barisan Nasional and N87 Friend’s club at Taman Guru here on Monday night.
Also present were Kota Baru Umno divisional chief Tan Sri Mohd Fatmi Che Salleh, BN candidate for Kota Baru parliamentary constituency Fikhran Hamshi Mohd Fatmi and Kota Lama state seat candidate Chua Hock Kuan.
Meanwhile, Arul also slammed Datuk Zaid Ibrahim is trying to gain cheap publicity following reports that he planned to sue ANZ Bank in Australia to recover RM2.6 billion, which he alleged was siphoned from 1MDB.
He said the latest stunt by Zaid must have been triggered by his disappointment for not being selected by his party DAP as a candidate for the 14th General Election (GE14).
“l sympathise with him because l believe he was very upset after all the promises made by DAP.
“DAP has always favoured Chinese candidates and that is probably the reason why Zaid was not selected.
“He has also filed many lawsuits, including on 1MDB, but it was struck out by the court everytime,” he said.
Zaid was previously reported as saying that his lawyer in Australia had agreed to take the case against ANZ Bank to recover the RM2.6 bilion which he insisted was misappropriated from 1MDB.
Through his blog recently, Zaid wrote that he had gone to Sydney to meet his lawyer Levitt Robinson to discuss the case.
On another development, Arul Kanda said the move by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to continue linking Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to the 1MDB issue was only aimed at creating speculations to confuse the people.
He said most of the allegations by Dr Mahathir were based on civil summons made by the United States’ Department of Justice (DOJ) which had yet to be decided by the courts.
“What Dr Mahathir had claimed was mere speculation, which is without any truth,” he said.