KUALA LUMPUR: Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng today said the opposition’s attempt to refer him to the Parliamentary Rights and Privileges Committee was to “shift” attention away from bribery cases involving their leaders.
Lim said he would fight the opposition’s effort to refer him to the committee.
“It is their way to shift the attention from (Datuk Seri) Najib (Razak’s) trials, as well as some Umno members who were against his appointment as Barisan Nasional (BN) advisory board chairman.
“It is their task to do so, so let them be. We are also doing our task and the most important thing is that the money will be refunded to the taxpayers,” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby.
Though he said he would fight the opposition’s efforts, he had no worries about being referred to the committee.
“I only talked about the PAC (Public Accounts Committee) report.”
Lim said his previous statement on Goods and Services Tax (GST) refund having been stolen by the BN administration and the PAC reports were two different things.
“PAC did not mention anything about this (the monies being robbed). If we use the monies for something else, that is not right,” he said.
The PAC, in its report, had found that RM19.4 million from the GST refund account had not gone missing, or stolen, but had been used for other things, including government expenditure, thus making Lim’s statement “inaccurate”.
Earlier, Dewan Rakyat Speaker Datuk Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof had said he would make a ruling tomorrow on a motion to probe Lim over his “stolen” GST refund allegations.
“I have to read the PAC report first. There are 51 pages,” he said in addressing opposition leader Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who raised the matter during the debate session.
Ismail had yesterday moved a motion to refer Lim to the Rights and Privileges Committee over his claims.