Previously, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng had accused the Barisan Nasional administration of misusing RM19.4 billion meant for GST refunds, but the Public Accounts Committee today confirmed that no GST refund money had gone missing.

The PAC noted, however, that there had been a violation of the Goods and Services Tax Act 2014 when the funds were transferred into the Consolidated Revenue Account instead of the GST Refund Account as stated under Section 54(2) of the act.

But in a Facebook post, Najib said the same law allowed the government to also choose to deposit the GST refunds into the consolidated fund.

He said Section 54(5) states “Notwithstanding subsection (2) and the provisions of the Financial Procedure Act 1957, the Minister may authorise the payment into the Consolidated Revenue Account in the Federal Consolidated Fund of all or part of the moneys of the Fund”.

“So, I allowed GST revenues to be channelled to the Consolidated Revenue Account upon the advice of civil servants for the use of cash flow management.

“This is also the case with Singapore’s GST Act where all GST revenue is channelled into the Consolidated Revenue Account before being refunded,” he said.

He said paying out GST refunds needed time because there were many claims which needed to be verified first since there were those which did not meet the requirements or were false claims.

This, he said, was confirmed by the PAC report which noted that only RM1.45 billion was approved to be refunded as of June 5 last year.

Najib, who was also the finance minister, noted that the PH-led government only paid back RM3 billion of the RM19.4 billion Lim claimed had been robbed by the previous administration, and this meant it was untrue that all RM19.4 billion deserved to be refunded.

The Pekan MP also noted that the PAC report had not recommended the government take any legal or criminal action in this matter.

“Now we will see if the PH-led government will take any action against Lim,” he said.