Malaysia did not suffer financially from Bank Negara's disastrous foreign exchange trades in the early 1990s, but it is suffering now due to 1MDB related issues, Pakatan Harapan chairperson Dr Mahathir Mohamad said.

For Mahathir, the forex incident that took place almost 30 years ago, when he was prime minister, had already been "resolved".

"If the law is to be upheld, I call for an RCI (Royal Commission of Inquiry) on 1MDB and the RM2.6 billion in Najib (Abdul Razak's) bank account.

"This is a current issue and has an impact on the country today.

"What happened 30 years ago has been resolved and it has no effect on the country's finances," Mahathir said in a video uploaded on Bersatu's Facebook page today.

This was Mahathir's first official response to Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) report on Bank Negara's foreign exchange losses in the early 1990s.

The report implicated former Bank Negara official Noh Yakcop Mohamed as being the main person behind the RM31.5 billion in losses incurred.

'Purpose merely to tarnish the opposition'

Mahathir and two of his former finance ministers - Anwar Ibrahim and Daim Zainuddin - were accused of abetting Noh Yakcop and misleading the cabinet on the magnitude of the losses.

Like many other critics of the RCI's conduct on the forex losses, Mahathir stressed that the crucial parts of his testimony, along with that of Anwar and Noh Yakcop (photo), were not included in the report.

In view of this, he said, the purpose of the RCI was merely to tarnish him and other opposition figures.

"If I was not a leader in the opposition, I believe I would have been spared," he said.

He said that the RCI report had implied that he had pocketed money from the episode when this was not the case.

"Had this happened in other countries, people will laugh because the report is incomplete and not fair.

"They want to accuse me of stealing money. They can check if I stole money or not. They have been trying to accuse me of stealing money but they found nothing," Mahathir said.