'Make allegation clear and I'll sue,' Khairy tells Ramanan

BN's Sungai Buloh candidate Khairy Jamaluddin has threatened to take legal action against his opponent, Pakatan Harapan's R Ramanan if the latter accuses him of corruption.

This comes after Ramanan challenged him to explain "the ECM Libra issue", in which the health minister was embroiled in 2006.

"I am saying this clearly. If you want to make an accusation then make one; meaning you say it clearly, like, 'KJ stole money'.

"Don't recycle old issues and ask for explanations. These are rhetoric meant to affect my credibility and image," he said when asked on the campaign trail today.

"Make a proper accusation that I stole money, or I was a scammer, and I'll see you in court.”

Khairy added that he has explained this numerous times in the past, and the matter was even the subject of the Public Accounts Committee's (PAC) investigation.

Ramanan first raised the ECM Libra issue in an interview with Malaysiakini published on Nov 5, when he questioned why there is attention to a 2014 civil case where the court found he was involved in fraud, but not those in which Khairy was involved.

The ECM Libra involves Khairy's purchase of the merchant bank's shares at US$2.6 million, through a soft loan from the company's founders.

It became a controversy when troubled ECM Libra was allowed to merge with government company Avenue Capital, soon after Khairy bought the shares.

At the time, Khairy's father-in-law Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was prime minister, leading to the matter being investigated by the PAC.

Khairy was forced by public pressure to sell his shares in ECM Libra.

Ramanan’s case

In a civil case in 2014, the KL High Court found Ramanan had obtained RM5.5 million fraudulently by presenting a forged letter, which led the plaintiff, psychiatrist M Mahadevan, to believe Ramanan could obtain rent owed to him by the Defence Ministry.

The Defence Ministry had used the psychiatrist's land as a firing range.

Following the verdict, Ramanan resigned as MIC treasurer-general.

He returned the RM5.5 million to the plaintiff, and the lawsuit was settled out of court.

Ramanan told Malaysiakini that the matter was a business misunderstanding and had been resolved amicably.

No criminal charges were made against Ramanan.

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