Company boss denies ties with Najib, to sue Rafizi over RM100 million grant claim

A company named by PKR's Rafizi Ramli as recipient of a RM100 million research and development (R&D) grant from Putrajaya said it would sue the Pandan MP for defamation for making such allegations.

NSE Resources chief executive officer Azhar Anuar, in an interview with Star Online, said he had "no choice" but to consider taking legal action against Rafizi as his allegations had affected the company's name and reputation.

This comes after Rafizi made a series of claims over the past few days that the company had received the grant from the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry on the recommendation of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Azhar, however, denied his company has ties with Najib or Umno.

"How can I go straight to PM when he doesn't even know who I am? What I did was to write a letter to the Mosti minister because he said he would support us as we are a triggering project," he was quoted as saying, referring to the acronym for the ministry.

He said his 12-year-old company applied to the ministry for a financial aid of RM100 million to complete the final phase of its RM2 billion gasifier steam boiler plant in Kertih, Terengganu, adding that the company is one of the "trigger projects" under the ministry's Bio-economy Transformation Programme Entry Point Project (EPP).

"This financial assistance has nothing to do with the R&D grant. Why would I go back to R&D, something that I have done years ago?" he was further quoted as saying.

He also denied that NSE Resources did not go through proper procedures to obtain financial aid, saying that they were put through a six-week evaluation by an external party from Germany.

"Rafizi also insinuated that we had received the RM100mil, but we have not received even a single sen yet. We don't even know the status of our application," he told Star Online.

Over the past few days, Rafizi had questioned Najib's alleged interference in the approval of a RM100 million R&D grant to NSE Resources through a letter signed by Science, Technology and Innovations Minister, Datuk Dr Ewon Ebin on January 21.

The letter apparently referred to a letter from Najib's office dated November 21 last year, after NSE Resources wrote to the prime minister on November 15.

Rafizi (pic, left) had also alleged the company had managed to secure another RM50 million grant from the Energy, Green Technology and Water ministry, which Azhar said was just a "collateral".

"Since our project involves green technology as we are releasing less green house gasses, we received a certificate from the ministry saying that we fulfilled the Green Technology financing scheme eligibility criteria.

"However, this certificate is a collateral, in order for us to get banking facilities, not a grant," Star Online quoted him as saying.

Putrajaya had also denied Rafizi’s allegations, with Mosti's deputy minister Datuk Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah revealing a list of more than 4,000 grant recipients by his ministry which did not include NSE Resources.

Abu Bakar also questioned the authenticity of the letters produced by Rafizi.

"The ministry's records do not show any single private firm which was awarded more than RM3 million, out of the total RM2.9 billion allocated under the Ninth Malaysia Plan," he was quoted as saying by Malaysiakini.

However, Rafizi rebutted Abu Bakar’s denial, saying the list he showed was from the Ninth Malaysia Plan for the period of 2006 to 2010, whereas the information he exposed was a grant approved by the ministry on January 21 this year. – April 25, 2014