MIED AGM: Expect fireworks over missing millions

Fireworks are expected when MIC's education arm holds its 23rd annual meet tommorrow, where questions concerning the missing millions are bound to be raised.

The money, which went missing from the Maju Institute of Educational Development (MIED) account, was later traced to the personal account of one of its former top executive.

Apart from MIED members, the Indian community is also keen on knowing what happened to the funds, which has been the subject of investigations by the police and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

The members, led by former MIC Youth chief S A Vigneswaran, are expected to grill the MIED trustees on this issue.

Former MIC deputy president S Subramaniam, who highlighted an error by the MIED company secretary in sending out notices of the AGM, and his supporters will most likely join in the fray.

Yesterday, Vigneswaran wrote a letter to the secretary higlighting another mistake in the notice of the meeting dated March 9.

In the letter, Vigneswaran objected to the AGM being held on the grounds that the notice was defective.

'They were just rubber-stamps'

According to him, the notice was defective based on the following incurable irregularities:

1. The said notice is given pertaining to the 23rd AGM when in actual fact the 23rd AGM is not for the current year but is the AGM for the year 2008.
2. The 23rd AGM is an adjourned AGM and the notice fails to specify it as adjourned.
3. At the adjourned 23rd AGM, only item '1' on the agenda can be validly executed i.e. laying of the audited financial statement for year ending 2007.
4. Item 2 and 3 on the agenda cannot be carried out at the adjourned 23rd AGM for the year 2008.

Vigneswaran, who has been a life member of MIED since 2000, told FMT that the education arm has never held a proper AGM.

Normally, he said, it will be just done via circular resolutions immediatly after the MIC Central Working Committee (CWC) meetings.

The 31 members of MIED will blatantly endore without checking the details on the circular, he added.

"Most MIED members are CWC members and they just function as 'rubber-stamps' which resulted in the mess we are facing today," he stressed.

MIC president S Samy Vellu and his deputy G Palanivel are among the MIED trustees.
Police reports and lawsuits
Early last year, the spotlight fell on MIED when S Sothinathan, who was then MIC vice-president, lodged two police reports over missing MIED files.

The reports claimed that files pertaining to the MIC-owned university Aimst were missing from the party headquarters in Jalan Rahmat, off Jalan Ipoh, here.

Following this, Samy Vellu issued a show-cause letter to MIED chief executive officer P Chitirakala Vasu to explain the discrepancies in the accounts of MIED, which runs Aimst through a subsidiary company, MIED Capital Sdn Bhd.

Chitirakala later accused the MIC president of siphoning MIED funds, which Samy Vellu had denied.

She also filed three defamation suits against Samy Vellu, his wife R Indrani and Tamil daily Tamil Nesan, which is linked to the MIC president.

Chitrakala had said that she filed the suits to clear her name after being linked to the missing money.

It was widely reported that MACC is investigating a former executive of MIED who allegedly banked RM4 million into his account that was initially given out as a loan to a subsidiary of MIED but ended up in his personal account instead.

by FMT