Former auditor general Tan Sri Dr Madinah Mohamad has disputed claims by Lembaga Tabung Haji (TH) chairman Tan Sri Rashid Hussain over her attendance at the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the institution.
Madinah said she attended the RCI proceedings on June 3, 2022, after receiving a subpoena to give evidence, but was later told by a member of the secretariat that she did not need to enter the hearing room and should go home.
“I attended the proceedings because I had received a subpoena, but was told to go home without being called to give evidence before the RCI on the date they had set,” she said.
She also rejected Rashid’s claim that she had asked to enter the hearing room together with then National Audit Department Financial Audit Division deputy director Dr Mona Othman.
According to Madinah, Mona was only waiting outside the hearing room in case the RCI required additional technical information concerning TH.
“I never asked to attend the proceedings with Mona. She was only ‘on standby’ outside in case there were questions of a technical nature,” she said.
Madinah said a member of the RCI secretariat subsequently came out and told her she did not need to enter the hearing room. When she asked why, she was told the person was unsure.
“If it was true that Mona could not be brought in, why wasn’t I informed and why was I the only one told to go home?” she said.
She also acknowledged submitting written responses to 75 questions from the RCI but maintained that this could not substitute for giving oral evidence.
“I did submit an affidavit, but it cannot replace oral testimony. They need to hear what I have to say,” she said.
Madinah was previously reported to have addressed a RM4.8 billion discrepancy between the National Audit Department’s findings and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) assessment of TH.
She said the differing figures did not indicate that the National Audit Department had overlooked losses or that PwC had overvalued them, explaining that the two assessments involved differences in mandates, scope, reference periods and valuation methods.
Madinah added that the department’s audits should be assessed according to the laws, statutory mandate and accounting standards in force when the audits were conducted, rather than approaches introduced later.
She said it was therefore inappropriate to conclude that the discrepancy undermined the National Audit Department’s credibility or called its previous audits into question.
