KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia seized more than 1 billion ringgit from a bank account of state-owned China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering over incomplete pipeline projects, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Monday.
“I understand that money for 80% of the pipeline was paid, but the work completed was only 13%,” Mahathir told reporters. “So the government is entitled to get back the money, since the project was canceled.” In 2016 CPP won a contract from the government of former prime minister Najib Razak to build a 600km petroleum pipeline along the west coast of peninsular Malaysia and a 662km gas pipeline in Sabah, the Malaysian state on Borneo island.
Malaysia and China this year agreed to resume a multibillion-dollar rail project after shaving off nearly a third of its cost to 44 billion ringgit.
Good job PM Mahathir