Editor’s Note: We reckoned that former Tourism Malaysia chairman Wee Choo Keong has the right to react and deserve the right of reply (in as verbatim a manner as possible) to our article entitled “Wee Choo Keong takes a swipe at ‘Captain Loke’ for being AirAsia’s salesman” yesterday (Dec 31).
FORMER Tourism Malaysia chairman Wee Choo Keong has insisted that Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook deserved to be awarded “salesman of the year for PN17 Capital A Bhd (formerly AirAsia Group Bhd) which is the operator of AirAsia” for being lenient on the budget carrier.
“Several MPs including myself spoke against the Malaysia Airline (MAS)-AA (AirAsia) share ‘SUAP’ (‘swap’ but purportedly spelt so to insinuate bribery) & owing of airport tax/PSC (passenger service charge) paid by PN17 @airasia which I had spoken to @anthonyloke then and he was fully aware of,” he justified in his latest Tweet.
“With such backdrops, Capt Loke should be awarded Salesman of the year for PN17 AirAsia by @MOTMalaysia.”
At the same time, the former two-term DAP MP for Bukit Bintang (and one-term MP for Wangsa Maju under PKR’s ticket) also claimed that both Loke and FocusM have “forgotten (about) the famous @airbus RM200 mil BRIBES paid to two conmen “EXECUTIVES 1 & 2” of PN17 @airasia”.
“Surely @anthonyloke and the mass media were fully aware of these scandals where the Garuda CEO was jailed for eight years. @UKSFO @SecComMY @SPRMMalaysia,” noted Wee.
“For FocusM, Airbus paid PN17 @AirAsia top executives RM200 mil BRIBES in exchange for aircraft orders. In Indonesia, the Garuda CEO was already jailed for eight years for a similar offence. In MY (Malaysia), both (are) running amok in (the) corporate world.”
For context, Reuters reported on May 8, 2020 that an Indonesian court had jailed Emirsyah Satar, a former Garuda Indonesia chief executive for bribery and money laundering related to procurement of planes and engines from Airbus and Rolls-Royce.
Satar’s lawyer Luhut Pangaribuan said his client had been given an eight-year sentence and fined S$2 mil (US$1.4 mil) by the country’s corruption court.
Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) had indicted Satar, CEO of Garuda from 2005 to 2014, over payments from a businessman via a third party for the procurement by Garuda Indonesia of Roll-Royce Trent 700 engines and Airbus A320 and A330 planes.
With regard to a mention by FocusM that AirAsia had in July 2015 filed a suit against Wee who is also the owner of blog http://weechookeong.com for knowingly and intentionally published false and malicious statements defamatory to the low-cost carrier, thus damaging the airline’s reputation, Wee rebutted as follows:
“For the record & benefit of the unnamed author of FocusM: Yes PN17 @AirAsia sued me for defamation and in March 2018, (the) High court had dismissed the said gagging suit and AirAsia was ordered to pay COST! https://weechookeong.com/2018/03/08/court-finds-allegations-were-true-or-substantially-true-part-1/”.
Elaborating further on the subject of the MAS-AirAsia share swap, Wee went on to highlight that Capital A’s chairman and AirAsia co-founder Datuk Kamarudin Meranun was found by the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) to be insider trader of MAS/AirAsia shares prior to and during the scandalous MAS/AA shares swap exercise in August 2011.
“In 2011 It took me eight months in Parliament to stop the scandalous @MAS-@airasia shares ‘SUAP’ which was a brain child of none other then @CIMB CEO @nazrazak, another #BankerJagaBanker. MAS was raped!” revealed Wee.
“In 2019, PN17 @Airasia top executive TS Kamarudin was reported in @theedgemalaysia about his criminal activities/inside trading of MAS shares when AA (AirAsia) was involved in the scandalous MAS-AA share ‘SUAP’ as promoted by Nazir Razak (then the group managing director/CEO of CIMB Group Holdings Bhd)”.
Added Wee: “Surprisingly he was not charged in court but paid a pittance fine of RM3.5 mil (to) the useless SC! @BursaMalaysia.” – Jan 1, 2023
