The war of words continues with Penang Deputy Chief Minister II P Ramasamy today countering MCA deputy president Wee Ka Siong’s offer to purchase Penang land at the price of land swapped for the Penang undersea tunnel project.

Ramasamy said he would like to buy land in Kuala Lumpur for the price paid by 1MDB for the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) land.

“I challenge MCA deputy president Wee Ka Siong to offer me a parcel of land at RM64 per square foot (psf), the price paid by 1MDB in 2010 (for TRX).

“If he can, then I am prepared to purchase the land with the support of some investors either in Penang or Kuala Lumpur,” said Ramasamy in a statement today.

Like Wee’s offer, he said the profit accrued from the deal would be given to charity.

Ramasamy was responding to Wee, who had challenged him yesterday to sell prime seaside land on Gurney Drive in Penang for RM475 psf.

Wee said if Ramasamy agreed on the price, he would get together a few groups to purchase that land and donate half the profits to charity.

The RM475 figure refers to an earlier statement made by Ramasamy, in which the deputy chief minister said that the Penang undersea tunnel project would be funded by a land swap deal which was “locked in at the value of RM1,300 psf, even though the current value is only around RM475 psf”.

However, Ramasamy today clarified that he had made an error with the figures, that it should have been RM457 psf, not RM475 psf.

He emphasised that the figure was supplied by the Valuation and Property Services Department, a federal agency, to aid the state government and Zenith Consortium during their negotiations. 

Ramasamy (photo) added that Wee had misunderstood his remark, and that the focus should have been on the RM1,300 psf, which represented the net value of the land, including its future value.

“I stated this figure (RM1,300 psf) as the value of the land, but Wee in his hurry to fault me, took the RM457 figure as the decisive value,” said Ramasamy.

Ramasamy called on Wee to apologise to the state government and the people of Penang for “his deliberate distortion of facts and for his outright lies about the tunnel project”.

The 70-acre land on which TRX now sits was sold by the government to 1MDB in 2010 for RM194 million.

1MDB’s dealings came under scrutiny five years later, when Tabung Haji said it bought a parcel of TRX land from the state investment fund at a discounted price. 

However, PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli recently questioned the supposed discount, noting that an Indonesian company had bought TRX land for a similar price from 1MDB.