OPINION: The 2012 Auditor-General’s Report revealed a telling saga: a Defence Ministry contract to build military married quarters, initially priced at RM1.74 billion, ballooned to RM3.21 billion -- an 84% overrun, while delivering shoddy work.
The Auditor-General's Office had audited 12 of these projects, finding that these had contributed to RM1.3 billion of the cost overrun stemming from, among others, delays of up to 1,240 days for delivery.
It found that only one of the audited projects had been awarded through an open tender, while the rest were through direct negotiation, limited tender, or by obtaining quotations. This was not an anomaly, but a pattern.
Six of these projects were located in the Klang Valley and were awarded to Syarikat USL, a joint venture by the Finance Ministry-owned Syarikat Perumahan Negara Bhd and the Armed Forces Fund Board Sdn Bhd.
IN 2011, the government contracted six littoral combat ships (LCS) costing RM9 billion as part of the Royal Malaysian Navy’s (RMN) fleet renewal plan . It paid Boustead Naval Shipyard RM6 billion without any deliveries.
According to the Asia Sentinel, then RMN chief, Admiral Abdul Aziz Jaafar, initially found the French designs “not suitable”. He wrote 10 letters of protest to the Defence Ministers and the then Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak. He received no response.
In August 2022, then PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli exposed several irregularities in the project and asked why the ships were not directly from shipbuilder DCNS, instead of a multi-layered structure involving Boustead Naval Shipyard Sdn Bhd (BNS) and two sub-contractors.
This was followed by Anwar Ibrahim, then leader of the opposition, declaring: “We must arrest and stop this nonsense.” The LCS scandal was exploited to the hilt and was the battle cry for Pakatan Harapan in the lead-up to the 2022 General elections.
Since becoming Prime Minister, Anwar promised to root out corruption with the full force of the law. He has regularly projected a fierce anti-corruption stance and continues to do so.
However, in June 2023, his cabinet approved RM11.2 billion to revive the ill-fated LCS contract -- paying more for less: five ships instead of six.
None of the hijacked funds has been recovered. No minister or senior bureaucrat has yet been prosecuted.
Yesterday, Anwar was at it again – saying the national audit system should be continuously strengthened in a professional, transparent, and accountable manner to curb leakages and prevent the abuse of power.
Very good. Excellent. Syabas. But what happens after the audits point out the shortcomings?
More than 40 years ago, former Opposition leader, Lim Kit Siang raised the issue of the AG’s report stating that the army paid RM4.50 each for a packet of instant noodles.
In its 2006/2007 report, the AG discovered that the government paid RM224 for a set of four ordinary screwdrivers (market price RM40) for the National Youth Skills Institutes (IKBN).
During the 2007-2011 period, I wrote a series of articles on the scandals within the Tourism Ministry.
An audit was ordered, and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PcW) review of the Tourism Ministry’s subsidiary, Pempena Group of Companies, revealed,.
Lim described it a shocking report of the incompetence, ineptitude, irresponsibility and even criminal breach of trust prevalent in GLCs.
It recommended that out of the RM54.4 million Pempena investments in 24 investee companies as at June 2008, it should exit its investments from five companies suffering an immediate loss of some RM20 million!
Pempena also entered dubious deals and paid advances to people who run RM2 companies, knowing that such advances could not be recouped. The wrongdoings were endless, and yet, the political masters who had vested interests said with a straight face: “Everything was above board.”
Was any action taken in the cases cited above? The AG issues quarterly reports, and if only five departments or officials had been identified or cited for abuse of power or misuse of funds in each volume, there ought to be at least 60 prosecutions. But there was no follow-up action.
How many prosecutions stem from these quarterly catalogues of waste and graft? Virtually none. The system is content to diagnose the cancer repeatedly, yet refuses to operate.
What is paramount is that action be taken against the perpetrators.
In most instances, the damning reports are attempts to show that some form of checks and balances exist. While the reports of the AG make good reading for "juicy details", what happens after that is never up for consideration.
Excessive spending and wasteful expenditure are nothing new in our government administration. Most departments and agencies are 'immune' to such reports highlighting all sorts of mismanagement of funds, including huge sums of money wasted on wrongful procurement.
More in frustration than in jest, I suggested that the AG send his report directly to the National Archives for “safe-keeping,” instead of wasting money on printing copies and circulating them to departments and agencies where they end up consigned to storerooms to collect dust.
It is no longer enough to call for better audits, as the Prime Minister did yesterday. We must demand mandatory, transparent action on their findings. Each qualified audit must trigger an automatic, public investigative process with clear timelines.
Responsible officers and ministers must be legally compelled to answer, not in closed-door committees, but before the people. The report must be a trigger for justice, not a substitute for it.
Otherwise, we must admit the painful truth: these volumes of observance are merely expensive fiction, printing a pretense of oversight while the plunder continues unabated. The Auditor-General’s office deserves better than to be the nation’s most elaborate scribe of its own decay. It is time its warnings were heeded, not just heard.
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