Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd has come out in strong defence of its recent move to suspend its chief economist pending the outcome of an internal inquiry for alleged "serious breaches of discipline".

    

"In this country, people are free to make all kinds of predictions on the election. After all, they are mere personal opinions that don't, in any way, affect financial institutions like us.

    

"But in our internal investigation following Azrul Azwar Ahmad Tajudin’s remarks made at a regional forum in Singapore, we discovered evidence of violations of the bank's internal policies. These were listed out in detail in a show-cause letter handed to him," a source told Bernama today.

    

In the bank's view, the breaches were so serious that it warranted a report to be lodged with the police’s commercial crime division, he added.

    

The source noted that Bank Islam's rules on its officers who were invited to public forums had been clear.

    

"They have to seek approval from the management to participate in the forum, and have their presentation vetted.

    

"Azrul did not do all these. He went to Singapore completely without our knowledge and on the bank's time," he claimed.

    

Further internal investigations by the bank also revealed that Azrul had, in recent months, sent out a series of emails relating to the bank's official documents from his office to third parties, including highly confidential minutes of Bank Islam's board meetings.

    

"He is not a board member of the bank, and was not supposed to be in possession of those minutes.

    

"We discovered from the bank's computer server that other confidential bank matters had been forwarded to outsiders.

    

"These are very serious breaches of office policies and disciplines that left us with no choice, but to act firmly," he said.

    

When asked to comment on the half-page advertorial taken out by non-governmental organisations and activists in a newspaper on Feb 14 to voice their support for the beleaguered bank executive, the source said, "To be fair to us, these people should have read the attachments we included to his show-cause letter where we listed out in great detail on the serious breaches which, in our view, warranted our action."

    

"I would urge all of them to read the show-cause letter and these attachments before jumping to conclusions," he stressed on the advertorial.

    

"We are doing whatever it takes to protect the bank's interest. What we are doing is no different from what any other institution would do in similar circumstances. And I'm confident that our customers are behind us in this," he said.

    

He added that Azrul was due to appear before the bank's disciplinary board in March to defend himself, based on the show-cause letter.

- Bernama