National petroleum company Petroleum Nasional Bhd (Petronas) has announced no linkage with regards to a recent press articles that repeated a false statement made in a report by a Washington-based policy group that purported to link Petronas to illegal outflows of capital from Malaysia.
Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI), in its report entitled ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2000-2009’ released on January 18, reported that Malaysia was one of top five Asian countries that continued to produce the largest portion of illicit flows between 2000 and 2008. In 2008 alone, the total amount of outflow from these five nations almost reached US$500 billion.
On an average, these five countries accounted for 96.5 per cent of total illicit flows from Asia, and 44.9 per cent of flows out of all developing countries. Malaysia recorded a total of US$291 billion in illicit outflow throughout the eight-year period.
“This statement is completely false,” said Petronas in a released statement from Kuala Lumpur.
“Indeed, on its face, it is based upon a misquotation of a prior news article that the report cites as support for this statement. Petronas is pursuing its legal remedies against those responsible for this report, and intends to take all other appropriate steps to protect itself against any further publication of this false statement,” the group added.
