Madinah Mohamad testified that she was shocked on finding out there were orders to amend the original audit report on 1MDB.
The former auditor-general also told the Kuala Lumpur High Court that she was shocked that there was an order to destroy the original copies of the audit report.
The 12th prosecution witness was giving her oral evidence during today’s 1MDB audit report trial against former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak and the sovereign wealth fund’s former CEO Arul Kanda Kandasamy.
During cross-examination by lead defence counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, she said she was shocked when National Audit Department (NAD) officer Nor Salwani Muhammad informed her about the orders during a meeting in March 2017.
As they say, it’s all in the cover-up and Najib’s career has lurched from one cover-up to the next as a man who inherited an excess of power has sought to exploit and abuse it.
Had this disgraced former prime minister not been aware, as he claims, that there was wrongdoing at 1MDB until the day the electorate (who had certainly worked out that there was) ejected him from office, then why all these orders to amend and make secret the report that exposed the wrongdoing?
Likewise, why all the cover-ups to prevent a full and exhaustive investigation into the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu who was threatening to expose the kickbacks on the Scorpene submarine affair?
The one heartening revelation in the awful, dark litany of truly evil corruption that has emerged from the tenure of office by Najib Razak has been the genuine shock and horror of Malaysia’s high ranking officials at such antics. People like the Auditor General had standards and expected the government to be conducted in a reliable and law abiding manner.
This has been the bedrock of Malaysia’s respectability as a nation and its aspirations to rise to be a thriving high income democratic country. Yet, this man and his co-conspirators in the fatally corrupted UMNO party and its allies are still striving to undermine that principle of sticking to the rules in order to allow them to pursue criminal aspirations for wealth through abuse of office.
They have already conducted a coup and then put their country through two years of added misery over and above the privations of the pandemic, looting instead of distributing help to those most affected. The man now plans to bulldoze his way back into office by whatever means wealth and abuse of power can afford.
Like the Auditor General people need to be shocked at Najib and his cohorts and they must take action to unite to oppose them before the country marks a final slide into a third world dictatorship run by puppet masters from outside.