Shafie said he was surprised by allegations from his former friend and Sabah deputy chief minister, Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan, who had said that RM3.3 billion worth of federal funds came from the Rural and Regional Development Ministry during his tenure.
“I have known Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan for several decades now and regard him as a friend with a long tenure of administrative experience and I am surprised that he had specifically made some malicious inference when he mentioned that the projects allegedly connected to the corruption scandals were awarded in 2010 during my tenure as minister of the Rural and Regional Development Ministry,” Shafie said at a press conference.
“What is even more surprising is that he qualified his statement on the projects by specifically throwing malicious inferences that the projects were not handled by his state ministry,” he said, in denying his involvement in the scandal.
When asked why the state government had pointed the projects towards him, Shafie said it was “politics”.
“Let the evidence prevail. I’m not pointing the blame at anyone but I didn’t have anything to do with the two. I didn’t appoint them, I didn’t engage with them, I don’t even know them,” he said, referring to two top officers of the Sabah Water Department who were recently arrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
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