Najib: Mahathir knew of cash stored during elections

PETALING JAYA: Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak has alleged that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad knew about the huge amount of cash that was being kept by the former prime minister in the run-up to the 14th General Election (GE14).
Najib said that the millions found in an apartment in Bukit Bintang was only being stored there temporarily.
He said when Mahathir built the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Seri Perdana (the prime minister's official residence) in the late 1990s, he had also built vaults and safes at both locations which were meant to store cash received for the purposes of elections and other political operations.
He said this storage was similarly used by him to store the millions he received by donors prior to the 14th General Election (GE14), and that after Barisan Nasional's (BN) defeat, the cash was transferred to an apartment in Pavilion Kuala Lumpur as a temporary measure.
However, Najib said before any decisions were made on how to manage the money while waiting for a new party president to be elected, the apartment was raided by the police.
"Mahathir knew the existence of such huge amount of party cash at the PMO during elections because he, too, did the same when he was Umno president and (the fourth) prime minister.
"The police also knew of the cash stored in the Pavilion because the transferring of money from the PMO by officers is not a secret," he said in a statement posted on his Facebook page today.
"There was never such huge amount of money kept in the Pavilion or my residence before the elections, and the cash stashed in the PMO was also not that much during non-election period," he added.
Defending himself, Najib maintained the cash seized was meant for Umno, and that as such, the party has prepared lawyers to negotiate with the authorities on reclaiming the money.
He added that it is enshrined in the Umno constitution that the party president shall be in charge of managing any party assets, including political donations, and that this had been the case even when Mahathir was in charge of the party.