Senator in the dark over APs??? YAU MOU GAU....CHOR!!

KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Muhammad Abdul Ghani came forward to declare that he was the senator implicated by two newspapers as being involved in a cloned Approved Permit (AP) scam.

“I am the only senator in this country who has been given bulk APs to import cars,” he said.

However, Muhammad said, he had stopped managing his company, which imports reconditioned and used vehicles, since his appointment as senator six years ago.

“My son and his staff have been running the show. I am not involved in the business at all. I don’t know what was going on although the APs were issued under my company’s name,” he said.

The two dailies reported yesterday that a senator and his son had collaborated to clone the APs. They reported that the Customs Department had evidence of the scam with the seizure of at least 20 imported luxury vehicles brought in under cloned APs.

“I deny any involvement in any shady deals,” said Muhammad who lodged a police report over the newspaper articles in Kota Baru yesterday.

“I have no knowledge of how the APs were cloned. It is not right for the newspapers to say I was involved. The allegations are inaccurate, false and slanderous.

“I have made a police report on this.”

He said that when Customs officers investigated cloned APs at his company late last year, he had cooperated with them in the probe.

Muhammad, who has a 44% stake in the KL-based company, claimed somebody else had cloned the APs and sold them for a profit.

“I want the police to investigate this matter and the allegations made by the newspapers against me,” he said.

Customs preventive division director Mohamed Adnan Ariffin said yesterday the senator was given about 70 APs a year, while another businessman received some 300 APs from the International Trade and Industry Ministry.

He said investigations revealed that cloned APs were used because the two men’s companies imported vehicles beyond their quota.

The senator’s company imported about 150 luxury cars such as Mercedes Benz, BMW, Mazda RX8 and Toyota Harrier while the other businessman brought in 700 cars, he said.

Adnan said the cloned APs were not detected earlier “because they were used in different places and at different times.”

The department, he said, was unable to authenticate the validity of the APs when the documents were used. While the Customs database could verify that such an AP existed, it did not indicate whether the AP had been used, he explained.

When the Customs learnt late last year that the two companies’ car imports exceeded their quota, the department suspected that cloned APs were used.

Early this year, The Star reported that the Customs Department found that some APs had been “recycled”.

Customs director-general Datuk Abdul Rahman Abdul Hamid recently announced that three companies, including two well-known car importers, would be charged soon with abusing their APs.

Adnan said the investigation papers had been forwarded to the Attorney-General’s Chambers.

Early this year, the ministry set new conditions that require the chassis and engine numbers of imported cars to be stated in the AP.

“Since then, we have not detected any duplication or cloning of APs. We hope this will bring an end to such scams,” he said.