The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have followed through with the The Age newspaper’s allegations of corruption surrounding a MARA Inc property purchase in Melbourne by raiding the homes and offices of several local real estate developers.
This morning, The Age reports that Australian federal agents seized computers and documents from a home in the Vermont South neighbourhood in Melbourne, and are believed to be preparing for more raids in and around Melbourne in connection to the case.
The AFP operation, codenamed Carambola, aims to uncover evidence in the case of the shady sale of Dudley International House, an apartment building near Monash University, to MARA Inc, the subsidiary of federal agency Majlis Amanah Rakyat, represented by three Malaysians – a “top MARA official”, a “senior government servant”, and a “former politician”.
The Age reported on Tuesday that the building’s sale was a front facilitating kickbacks to the three Malaysian representatives, to the tune of AUD4.75 million (RM13.82 million).
The three Malaysians are also implicated in a larger network of property scams totalling some AUD80 million (RM232.74 million) throughout Melbourne.
Yesterday, MARA chairperson Annuar Musa acknowledged that the MARA Inc purchase of the marked-up Dudley International had been approved, but maintained that top MARA management was under the impression that the AUD22.5 million price tag was “a bargain”.
Annuar also stated that the purchase was greenlit by the National Economic Council, which is chaired by Prime Minister Najib Razak – a fact that Najib took some effort to dismiss as irrelevant as media attention suddenly swung to his involvement, given his already awkward connection to scandal-ridden 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
Najib vowed that those responsible for “misleading or attempting to mislead” the National Economic Council in passing off the Dudley International purchase as being on the up and up will face legal action.
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