Bukit Aman Commercial Crimes Investigation Department (CCID) acting director Datuk Saiful Azly Kamaruddin said police today raided the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) over allegations of misappropriations of funds.
He said commercial crimes investigators from the Brickfields police headquarters had gone to the HRDF main office in Damansara Heights to conduct investigations related to an ongoing probe on misappropriation of funds, fraud and other malpractices.
"Investigators from Brickfields CCID had been sent to HRDF following instructions from the Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department.
"Investigations are mainly related to misappropriation of funds," he told Malay Mail when contacted.
It is still unclear if investigators seized any documents and computers from the HRDF office.
Investigators had also prior to today's raid interviewed several HRDF staff members in relation to the investigations.
On Wednesday, The Star reported that HRDF allegedly bought property in Bangsar South here without its board or investment panel's knowledge in a 2015 purchase involving hundreds of millions of ringgit.
The HRDF apparently purchased the six floor property at a price of RM154 million including Goods and Services Tax (GST) although the board's approval was for the government agency to buy another building in the same location a pre-GST price of RM141 million.
A source told the local daily that the board was also informed that the minister (at that time) approved the change of the property to be acquired.
In November, Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran said high-ranking staff of HRDF misappropriated around RM100 million of the RM300 million in the fund.
He also highlighted several wrongdoings, such as abuse of duties, criminal breach of trust and the acting beyond prescribed procedure without reporting to the board of directors.
Kulasegaran also set up a five-member independent governance oversight committee (GOC) to review and probe the allegations.