In 1981, I was the investment manager of Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), and with Tun Ismail Ali, the chairman of PNB, we briefed the then deputy prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and then finance minister Tengku Razaleigh on the plan to take Guthrie from British investors.
On Sept 7, 1981, several of us led what is now known in history, as the 'Dawn Raid' on the London Stock Exchange. In mere hours, Guthrie became a Malaysian company.
I am proud to have been associated with the late Tun Ismail Ali, a very fine gentlemen, during this very proud moment in our Malaysian history.
So when I was informed that Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak had called me a liar and said that his late father, the prime minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein was involved, I regret his twisting of facts and rewriting of history. (As reported in Utusan Malaysia and Bernama, April 23, 2007).
This is because by 1981, Tun Abdul Razak, who was a great man with great vision, had passed away several years before.
It is most regrettable that the deputy prime minister had resorted to such low tactics and even worse, dragged the good name of his late father into an attempt to confuse the public with such incorrect accounts of a historical event, merely to launch a personal attack on me.