KUALA LUMPUR, March 11 — Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said today she will resign as women, family and community minister next month but will stay on as Wanita Umno chief.
“On April 8, when my term as senator ends, I will step down as... minister,” she told reporters at Desa Water Park here.
Shahrizat’s resignation comes following months of allegations that she and her family had used a RM250 million federal loan earmarked for the National Feedlot Corporation (NFCorp) to pay for personal expenses.
The cattle-rearing company is headed by her husband, Datuk Seri Mohamad Salleh Ismail, and their three children.
It was tapped to run the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) in Gemas, Negeri Sembilan in 2006, when Shahrizat was in Cabinet.
The former Lembah Pantai MP previously resisted calls from the opposition as well as Umno veterans to quit, stressing that she was “only the wife” of Salleh and had nothing to do with the embattled entity.
NFCorp hit the national headlines after it made it into the Auditor-General’s Report last year for missing production targets.
Since then, the publicly-funded firm has been repeatedly accused by opposition parties of using its government soft loan for purposes unrelated to cattle farming.
These include the purchase of multi-million ringgit luxury condominium units in Bangsar and Singapore as well as land in Putrajaya.
Police recommended last month that the Attorney-General (A-G) charge NFCorp’s directors for criminal breach of trust, but the A-G has asked the police to conduct further investigations.
Shahrizat was appointed as women, community and family minister in 2001 and held the post until 2008, when she lost in the general election.
She was then appointed special advisor to the prime minister on women affairs and social development, before being reassuming her Cabinet portfolio a year later.
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