Yesterday, Halim said in a Bernama interview: “Every single sen of the rakyat’s money is safe, there is no danger of their money being lost as it is invested in a very prudent manner.”
If so, why has EPF lost RM107.7 million from its RM269.28 million investment in 81.6 million Time dotCom shares which closed at RM1.98 at the end of trading yesterday, or RM1.32 or 40% below its IPO price of RM3.30.
I am still waiting for the EPF to answer two questions:
How can Halim claim that every sen in EPF is safe when he could
not answer these two questions?
I have now a new question for the EPF. What are all the loans given out by the EPF after the financial crisis from 1997 to 1999 when EPF had increased loans during this period to corporate borrowers because banks had turned cautious in extending credit.
There was a dramatic increase in EPF's asset and investment allocation for loans and debentures at the height of the financial crisis in 1997 reaching RM33.83 billion or 26.16 per cent of total EPF funds in 1997, RM38.43 billion or 26.58 per cent in 1998, RM39.87 billion or 24.61 per cent in 1999 and RM37.62 billion or 20.77 per cent in 2000 when a decade ago loans only constituted 8.2% of total allocation of EPF funds.
Did the EPF Board, and in particular the five workers’ representatives on the Board, ever queried at EPF Board meetings the sudden dramatic increase in vast sums of EPF loans from 1997-1999 and whether they were high-risk, dubious or even downright bad loans to crony companies made at the expense of the best interests of the EPF members?
It would be better for Halim to explain why the EPF Investment Panel decided to use EPF funds to play the role of the “white knight” to save corporate borrowers by giving them increased loans which they could not get from banks after the 1997 Asian financial crisis instead of making meaningless statements like “every sen in EPF is safe”.
(13/4/2001)