KUALA LUMPUR, March 30 — Tan Sri Madinah Mohamad told the High Court today that she first learnt that the audit report on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) had been tampered with in March 2017 after taking over as the new auditor-general.
Madinah, who was the auditor-general from February 2017 to February 2019, is the 12th prosecution witness in the joint trial of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and former 1MDB CEO Arul Kanda Kandasamy over the tampering of the 1MDB audit report.
She said she was shocked to learn that her predecessor Tan Sri Ambrin Buang had been given orders to amend the 1MDB audit report before it was to be given to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
She added that she did not seek to find out who had given Ambrin those orders back in 2017.
The finalised audit report on 1MDB was initially scheduled to be presented to the PAC on February 24, 2016, but was rescheduled to March 4, 2016 as a meeting chaired by then chief secretary to the government Tan Sri Ali Hamsa on February 24, 2016 resulted in amendments to the audit report before it was given to the PAC.
Today, Madinah explained how she came to know in March 2017 about the existence of the first version of the finalised audit report, which she described as the “original copy”.
Just before the National Audit Department’s 1MDB audit team was to brief her as the new auditor-general about the amended 1MDB audit report that was given to the PAC, Madinah said Datuk Nor Salwani Muhammad (who was the 1MDB audit team’s coordinator and now deputy auditor-general) had showed two copies of the audit report to her.
Madinah said Nor Salwani showed her the two copies just before they went into the meeting room while the rest of the 1MDB audit team were waiting in the meeting room, with the first copy being the “original copy” while the second copy was the “amended copy”.
The original copy that Nor Salwani showed was the only copy of the original 1MDB audit report that she had been told to destroy, with Madinah saying that she believed the 1MDB audit team did not know about the existence of this surviving original copy.
Having briefly been told by Madinah about the original copy and what had happened and without discussing this original copy in detail, Madinah said she took note of it but set it aside, and then went in to the meeting room to be briefed on the amended copy that was submitted to the PAC.
Asked by Najib’s lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah about her reaction to this discovery, Madinah said she was shocked.
“I was shocked because I had no idea there were two copies, and I was shocked when she said that Tan Sri Ambrin Buang had orders to amend, and she had orders to destroy all of the printed copies, but she kept one under her chair,” she said.
“I was shocked that Tan Sri Ambrin Buang was instructed to amend the original copies and Salwani was instructed to destroy all the copies that were meant to be tabled to the PAC.”
Shafee then asked if Madinah had an idea who could be behind the amendments to the 1MDB audit report or “who’s the culprit if there was one”.
“No, of course not, because as I mentioned to you earlier, the officers were waiting in the meeting room. So she perhaps took more than 15 minutes to talk to me, and she said Tan Sri Ambrin was instructed to amend and then I was instructed to destroy. I did not ask her who asked Tan Sri Ambrin all, because they were waiting,” she replied.
Madinah said she received a full briefing in 2018 regarding the amendment of the 1MDB audit report, explaining that she did not take further steps on the matter before that as there were no further activities that required action in her role as auditor-general.
Asked by Shafee, Madinah confirmed she did not do anything about the original copy until the new government came in in 2018, explaining however that she kept it locked in her office as it was a classified document.
“In March, when I was told about the existence of the original copy and I had to then shorten my conversation with Salwani because I had to go into the briefing ,after that I had kept the original copy with the amended copy in a proper safe cabinet, because it was under OSA (Official Secrets Act) at that time. So as you know, under OSA, means we are not at liberty to divulge anything or share whatever, so it was under lock and key for that duration,” she said.
Asked by Shafee if she had ever confronted Najib who was prime minister then on “whether he was giving any instructions in relation to the 1MDB audit report”, Madinah replied: “No, I didn’t.”
The trial before High Court judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan will resume this afternoon.
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