Umno Sabah ‘rebel’ says RM300m link a ploy

Ghani Yasin says the source of the news only wants to dramatise the whole thing to get the maximum impact.

KOTA KINABALU - Umno Pensiangan divisional chief Ghani Mohd Yasin, who has since admitted being questioned on Friday last week by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), has categorically denied that he “stole RM300 million” as widely speculated.

The MACC case, he revealed, was one of abuse of power involving RM9 million in compensation to villagers in Sook for land acquisition and not for criminal breach of trust as widely reported.

“Whoever is the source for the news certainly wants to dramatise the whole thing to get the maximum impact as if I stole RM300 million from the Sabah Land Development Board (SLDB),” he said.
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“They want to make me look bad, as if I am a crook.”

Ghani, who was breaking his silence on the matter, was setting the record straight to squash rumours circulating in social media.

He pointed out that as deputy chairman of SLDB, he didn’t have any executive power and that his work was to attend board meetings, among others.

“I still have a chairman above me and there were other directors on the board,” he added. “The general manager and the other executives ran the company.”

He was confident that time will tell that he was not involved in any corrupt practices. It was not logical for anyone to think, he stressed, that he could just simply make off with RM300 million belonging to SLDB for his own use as alleged.

He hopes that the MACC will find out who was trying to implicate him with this mischievous and fabricated story. There was an agenda behind it to embarrass him and his family, he added.

The source of the news, he noted, only mentioned him being “detained” by the MACC and left out the others who were questioned by the MACC.

Besides a former SLDB general manager, he said the others questioned were board members and officers.

“Why single me out as if I am the culprit behind all this?” he asked.

He clarified that he was not detained as reported and that he went voluntarily to the MACC office in Kuala Lumpur, after being invited, to tell them “what he knew”.

Ghani Yasin was one of eight Umno Sabah divisional chiefs who met with Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak in Putrajaya on July 10 in regard to a transition plan for the top leadership in the Sabah government.

By John Joseph