Police raid HRDF office

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 11 (Bernama) --  Police today raided the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) office in Bukit Damansara near here to assist with investigations into the criminal breach of trust and abuse of power involving the fund’s previous board members.

Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department acting director Datuk Saiful Azly Kamaruddin when contacted by Bernama, confirmed the matter.

He said a team from the department raided the office at 10 am, and were there for over 7 hours, seizing several documents.

"We will look into the documents before calling several individuals to testify. So far there have been no arrests," he said, adding the case was investigated under Section 409 of the Penal Code for breach of trust.

Meanwhile, HRDF in a statement said it would provide full cooperation to the authorities throughout the investigation.

"The police team from Bukit Aman is at Wisma HRDF to record the statement of the fund’s chief executive, as a follow-up to the report filed by him in 2018, against the previous administration," the statement said.

Bernama earlier reported a large sum of money from the HRDF Consolidated Fund had been misappropriated by some members of the previous management, including to purchase property in the country without the approval from the HRDF Board.

Human Resources Minister M. Kula Segaran in revealing the findings by the Governance Oversight Committee (GOC) said the investigations found that there were some elements of fraud as well, including in high salaries and bonuses paid to selected management staff.

-- BERNAMA