S'gor will not waste time on MCA's 'wild' claims

The Selangor government will not waste "its time and resources" responding to MCA's ill-devised plan to damage its reputation.

Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim said this when pressed by reporters on answers to several allegations raised by the BN component party on Talam Corporation Bhd's debt restructuring exercise undertaken by the state government.

"I don't want to waste my valuable time to teach MCA (about accounting). What I have done is to get internationally (reputed) local auditing firms to look at it so that the (auditing) will be done properly," said Khalid.

The menteri besar ridiculed MCA's accounting, dismissing it as "a method from the 1400s".

"The person looking at this must still be learning (about the) single-entry accounting, which was used before the 1400s. Today, there is an element called double-entry accounting - if you look at sales, you have to look at assets too," Khalid said.

"I don't want to waste the state's time and resources for this cheap MCA publicity. If they want to spend time dancing around their comedy act, which is irrelevant to most people, but don't waste the menteri besar's time," Khalid told a press conference yesterday.

MCA's central committee member Chua Tee Yong has accused Selangor of using RM1 billion to bail out Talam through a RM392 million supplementary budget passed in the state legislative assembly in 2009.

Chua revises claims

Chua, an accountant, however later revised the amount, claiming the state government paid RM266 million to bail out Talam - this claim has been rubbished by DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua.

Pua pointed out that the total valuation for all 13 properties surrendered by Talam should be taken into consideration for the debt restructuring exercise and that in the process, the state government actually obtained the 13 parcels of land at a RM9.1 million discount.

Khalid on Tuesday announced that the state would appoint five independent auditing firms to go through Selangor's handling of Talam's debts, and a White Paper on this would be tabled at the coming state assembly sitting.

"I can teach MCA accounting, which I had done for a few years (previously), and I've done investment work which was far more complex than the Talam debt.

"But that doesn't mean I should be volunteering to make them understand, because they have insufficient intelligence to get things right.

"If he (Chua) was my student, I would have given him an 'F' and told him to (do) another subject," Khalid quipped.