The Deputy Defence Minister deliberately waited until the end of his windind-up speech to reply points raised by Kit Siang.Initially, he did not want to admit that commission was given. He relented when Kit Siang pressed on with several questions.He admitted the French company paid the commission. Before I could rise to asked who then received the commission, the Deputy Minister stood down abruptly and ended his reply. Surely he did not want to get himself entangled with the Abdul Razak Baginda’s relationship with the Defence Minister.

Parliament
Thursday December 7, 2006

Commission paid by French firm, not Government

A FRENCH company paid a commission to a local firm awarded a Government contract worth 114 million euro (RM547mil at present exchange rate) for a coordination and support services project, Deputy Defence Minister Datuk Zainal Abidin Zin said.

“We did not pay commission to anyone as claimed by Lim, and the commission was paid voluntarily by France,” said Zainal Abidin. The Lim he was referring to is Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang.

“We cannot stop them if they want to give a commission.

“All the expenditure by the ministry had been tabled in Parliament and audited,” he said.

On the purchase of submarines, Zainal Abidin said they cost 996 million euro (RM4.78bil) and were due to arrive in 2009 and 2010.

Earlier, Lim claimed that a company owned by Abdul Razak Baginda was involved in helping the ministry buy two submarines from a French-Spanish joint venture.

He claimed that Abdul Ra-zak was paid a US$100mil (RM360mil) commission to negotiate the deal between Malaysia and the company.