KUALA LUMPUR — Government-linked investment company (GLIC) officers involved in approving funding for FashionValet Sdn Bhd should have their accounts frozen by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), a backbencher said.
Speaking in the Dewan Rakyat today, DAP’s Lim Lip Eng (Kepong-PH) said MACC should take firmer action on Khazanah Nasional Nasional Bhd and Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) officers who “suggested, supported and approved” the RM47 million investment deal while the agency investigates the matter.
“Their bank accounts should be frozen and a travel ban should be imposed on them, including Vivy and Fadzarudin, while investigations are ongoing,” Lim said during his debate on the Supply Bill 2025 at the committee stage.
He was also referring to FashionValet founders, Datin Vivy Sofinas Yusof and her husband Datuk Fadzaruddin Shah Anuar, who have apologised to the public and stepped down from their management roles in the company.
Sovereign wealth fund Khazanah and fund manager PNB lost RM43.9 million when they sold their stakes in FashionValet for RM3.1 million at the end of last year.
“FashionValet suffered losses for five consecutive years before Khazanah and PNB decided to invest in them. It’s clear that the investment did not make sense,” Lim said today.
“Even a primary school student would advise the government to not invest in FashionValet.”
He added that the anti-graft agency must determine whether corrupt practices were involved in the deal inked in 2018, saying: “If it’s true that there were elements of bribery, the graft giver would be none other than Khazanah and PNB.”
The losses involving government funds have led to calls for clearer and stricter criteria involving state-backed dealings which are supposed to serve strategic national interests.
The investments into FashionValet was purportedly to help the e-commerce platform showcase Bumiputera entrepreneurs and designs, but this did not take off. Instead, money went into beefing up Vivy’s own brands, dUCk and Lilit.
Last Friday, MACC chief commissioner Tan Sri Azam Baki said the commission is focusing its investigation on identifying the ownership of assets and financial sources acquired by Vivy and Fadzarudin.
This includes examining whether investments from Khazanah and PNB were utilised by FashionValet in a legitimate manner.
Earlier, Azam disclosed that MACC had detected several suspicious financial transactions from 2018 up to last year as part of its investigation into investment losses incurred by Khazanah and PNB in FashionValet.
On November 8, Vivy and Fadzarudin appeared at the MACC headquarters in Putrajaya for the fourth time to provide their statements.
FashionValet’s office as well as three other premises belonging to Khazanah, PNB and the Finance Ministry, have been raided by MACC which seized documents from those locations.
Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said it will conduct its own probe into Khazanah and PNB investments into FashionValet and plans to summon officials from the GLICs in the second week of December. – November 13, 2024