A Malaysian businessman accused of being involved in an alleged money-laundering scheme in the Maldives has insisted he only deals with legitimate funds.

Admitting that while he deals with clients who prefer to remain anonymous, businessman Faidzan Hassan stressed potential clients are subjected to the ‘know your customer’ (KYC) process and due diligence on anti-money-laundering.

“If you have money which you earned through business and you want to invest it somewhere, and you don’t want people to know you are the investor, that’s where we come into the picture.

“But of course before I receive your money to invest, I have to find out where and how you made the money,” he told Malaysiakini.

A documentary titled ‘Al-Jazeera Investigates: Stealing Paradise’ released yesterday had detailed the alleged scheme by a former Maldives vice-president and several “secretive businessmen” to launder US$1.5 billion in hard currency through an island investment plan.

Following the expose, Faidzan had vehemently denied his involvement in the alleged scheme.

The businessman said he was approached by a potential client who wanted to invest in the Maldives and was subsequently introduced to the former Maldives vice-president, who was at the time the country’s tourism minister.

“I only met the minister because they said they wanted me to have lunch with him, I didn’t know that the minister then became vice-president.”

When asked by Al-Jazeera about the former vice-president, Faidzan said he could not recognise the particular name as he had only met the former Maldivian vice-president over lunch.

Faidzan said he does not even remember when the meeting took place as it had happened a “long time ago”.

As with the potential investor, nothing had happened afterwards as the investor was not able to clear Faidzan’s KYC and anti-money laundering questionnaire.

Al-Jazeera, Faidzan then claimed, had edited out footage of him asking the Al-Jazeera reporter who had approached him to show evidence that money had indeed gone into his accounts.

Faidzan, meanwhile, said there was no reason why he should not handle money of investors who have proven their legitimacy.

“As long as they can answer the questionnaire and they can provide enough evidence - why can’t I handle people’s money who have shown that they are legitimate?

“That’s why I say I don’t launder money - I’ve been in the business for 40 years. If I wanted to launder money, I would’ve done it earlier, why should I do it now?”

According to the al-Jazeera documentary, among those supposedly involved in the purported scheme were Faidzan, a Singaporean, an Indonesian mining and energy investor, and a British-educated Indonesian who runs an iron ore mine.

Al-Jazeera's undercover expose

Al-Jazeera had included a video clip in which their reporter, who had approached Faidzan in a mall in Kuala Lumpur and questioned him if he had knowledge about “cash flying into the Maldives” under the company Sititrust &Administrators.

Faidzan, who is the principal partner of the company, had seemed bewildered by the line of questioning and denied allegations of money laundering.

However, Al-Jazeera said that earlier, one of their undercover reporters had met with Faidzan under the guise of being an investment executive with a number of very wealthy clients.

They had secretly filmed that meeting, where the undercover reporter asked whether he could help clients who wanted to move substantial sums in cash.

“We can do that,” Faidzan had said.

When he was confronted with this information by the reporter at the mall, he said that his comments were misunderstood and taken out of context.