KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 6 — PKR’s Rafizi Ramli today demanded Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil prove she was not involved with the National Feedlot Corporation’s (NFCorp) operations, saying it was a matter of utmost public interest.
The PKR chief strategist charged that the Wanita Umno chief had not once refuted PKR’s allegations with concrete proof, and that her response so far had merely been “jokes” and jibes aimed at her detractors.
In an apparent reference to Rafizi, who has led PKR’s attacks on Shahrizat and the NFCorp, the federal minister said the idea had been mooted by Perak Wanita Umno at a recent meeting.
“She has not provided proof that she was not at all involved in the decision making that awarded the contract to become integrator to her family’s company, nor has she proven that she was not at all involved with the operations of NFC,” Rafizi said in a statement to The Malaysian Insider.
The PKR leader said that Shahrizat would be “guilty by association” if she was aware that federal funds meant for the cattle project were used for “other purposes” and did not the matter to the relevant ministry.
“If our scrutiny of her conduct she deems as a personal attack against her or Wanita Umno, clearly she does not understand the weight of accountability that she assumes as a senior minister.
“I will continue to dig for evidence of misappropriation and her complicity in such misappropriation no matter how many baju kurungs she wants to send me, because no prior scandal involving a minister’s complicity in a financial misconduct receives such interest from the public,” added Rafizi.
Shahrizat has been repeatedly linked to NFCorp because of her husband’s role as company chairman, and their children’s directorships in the same entity.
The RM250 million publicly-funded cattle-raising scheme was first coined a “mess” in an article in English daily The Star after it made it into the pages of the Attorney-General’s 2010 Report for badly missing production targets.
The term was later repeated by various media organisations to describe NFCorp after PKR launched a series of exposés to show that the project’s funds had been allegedly abused.
PKR, led by strategic director Rafizi, had claimed that RM27 million was used for land and property purchases as well as expenses unrelated to cattle farming by Shahrizat and her family.
The company’s assets were frozen after investigations were launched by the police and the national anti-graft body following the exposés.
Shahrizat returns to ministerial duties today after taking three weeks’ leave to allow the authorities to complete their probe.
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