A senior officer of the Armed Forces Fund Board (LTAT) today disagreed with lawyers representing Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli that the board was specifically formed to look after the social and economic welfare of former army personnel.

Zakaria Sharif (above) who is the deputy chief executive officer of LTAT told the High Court in Kuala Lumpur that it was actually set-up for the training and re-training of former army personnel.

"There is no socio-economic requirement," said the 59-year-old witness.

When Rafizi's lawyer Azhar Arman Ali showed the witness a copy of the LTAT Act 1973 and read the preamble of the Act which states that the LTAT was to provide socio-economic benefits to its members, Zakaria disagreed with it.

This led to Justice Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim to say that there was no need to question the witness further on this issue.

LTAT filed the defamation suit after Rafizi claimed that army pensioners were not paid their retirement compensations on time.

The PKR vice-president had alleged that the late payments by 1MDB to Perbadanan Perwira Harta Malaysia (PPHM) for the Sungai Besi air base (below) relocation work for the Bandar Malaysia mega-project resulted in LTAT pumping in its own funds to enable its subsidiary to pay its contractors on schedule and thus delaying payments to army veterans.

The Bandar Malaysia project, owned by the beleaguered 1MDB, has been beset by problems and several quarters have alleged that LTAT was one of the government entities involved in bailing it out.

Zakaria was also asked by Arman and Saiful Izham Ramli about a series of articles on Rafizi's press conferences on the issue on March 21, 24 and 28, 2016 which appeared in Malaysiakini.

When shown the LTAT statement of claim he agreed that the words complained or pleaded by the statutory body were not in the Malaysiakini articles.

There were three paragraphs which the LTAT had cited as defamatory and it produced the articles by Malaysiakini but when asked to compare the articles with their statement of claim, he agreed that the defamatory words were not there.

Zakaria, who is the first LTAT witness in the defamation suit, earlier told the court that he had been deputy CEO since 2011 and prior to that, he was the fund's general manager for investments.

The witness also agreed LTAT did not sue Malaysiakini over the articles published.

Retirement benefits for armed forces

Earlier, when testifying during examination-in-chief by LTAT's lawyer Izat Osman, the witness said LTAT was formed to give retirement benefits and other such schemes for armed forces personnel.

He agreed that one of the sentences which he regarded as defamatory in the articles was that retired army personnel had to wait up to six months to get their gratuities.

"I regard that statement as defamatory as Rafizi accused LTAT of being late in paying gratuities. Indirectly the Pandan MP also gave an impression that LTAT was having cash flow problems following 1MDB's failure to pay PPHM.

"Rafizi gave an impression that LTAT did not have sufficient funds to pay the gratuities which is untrue and irresponsible," he said.

Zakaria said as a result of Rafizi's statement, LTAT chairperson Senator Rear Admiral (Rtd) Mohd Anwar Mohd Noor had to issue a statement to respond to these allegations.

He added that LTAT explained that gratuity payments had nothing to do with PPHM and 1MDB and claimed Rafizi did not seek clarification from LTAT before making his statements.

The witness also said 1MDB had paid PPHM and that by April 4, 2016, 669 out of the 110 people who filed their claim for gratuity had already received it.

He further explained that some had not received their payments due to insufficient particulars being provided.

The hearing continues on April 27.