KUALA LUMPUR, April 29 — Berjaya Corporation Berhad (BCorp) said its founder Tan Sri Vincent Tan did not participate in any discussions for a casino licence in Forest City, Johor, as reported last week.
BCorp in a statement said that the articles published by Bloomberg LP and The Edge Singapore on April 25 were factually inaccurate.
“The articles in question, titled ‘Malaysia in talks with the tycoons on casino to revive $100 billion Forest City’ (Bloomberg LP) and ‘Malaysia mulls casino at Forest City’ (The Edge Singapore), have included inaccurate information that misrepresents our supposed involvement in discussions with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim regarding the Forest City project,” it said.
BCorp also said Tan did not join any talks with Genting Group’s Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay or representatives of Yang diPertuan Agong Sultan Ibrahim over the same matter.
“We strongly believe that the publications or republications of the articles, which contained completely false and untrue statements, were made with malicious intent, aimed to cause political upheaval, undermine the public trust and distort the public’s perception on Sultan Ibrahim and the prime minister.
“Such malicious publications are further aggravated by the fact that neither news agencies had made any attempt whatsoever to verify nor confirm the veracity and accuracy of the statements in the articles before publishing the same, especially when the statements were attributed to an ‘unnamed source’” it added.
BCorp said it lodged a police report on April 26 in a bid to trigger an investigation to identify the purported “unnamed source” in the articles.
“We trust the police will do the necessary to investigate this matter and respectfully encourage any publication to be done more tactfully before making any allegations without prior verification,” it said.
Last week, Anwar insisted that reports claiming his administration was mulling the casino licence to be “a lie”.
