He said he was informed that the firm had no stakes in the SPV’s parent company, Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd, nor did it ever contract directly with the Penang government for the project.
“CRCC has neither given approval nor has knowledge of why the Penang government had considered them as shareholders of the Penang tunnel- roads project’s SPV,” he said in a statement today.
He said he was told this when he recently met top leaders of CRCC during his visit to Beijing to attend the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Civil Aviation and a bilateral meeting with China’s transport minister.
He said the top CRCC officials were eager to stress certain points to him as they had been briefed on the recent controversy regarding the project.
MCA deputy president Wee Ka Siong had said on March 4, 2013 that the state government’s official newsletter Buletin Mutiara published an article quoting state secretary Farizan Darus as saying the SPV had a paid-up capital of RM4.6 billion, with Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd and CRCC jointly holding a 70% stake in it.
Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng had previously claimed that the project’s main contractor was CRCC, which he described as “one of the largest construction companies in the world”.
In a statement yesterday, Lim said Wee had made “false insinuations”.
He claimed that the truth was that CRCC signed the agreement as the main contractor together with the SPV and the state government.
He also said that the project’s principal agreement was stamped and “CRCC’s commitment is part of the agreement”.
Liow today said CRCC had only signed an “acknowledgment of commitment” as an appendix to the preliminary agreement of the project. It would deliver the project should it be awarded any portion of the project by the SPV, Consortium Zenith Construction Sdn Bhd.
“As of today, CRCC had preliminarily contracted with the SPV to be the EPC (engineering, procurement & construction) contractor; and had also been given a contract by the SPV to perform detailed design reports for a total of US$22 million (RM85.8 million) for the three roads and undersea tunnel,” he said.
Liow said CRCC had assured that the “unique circumstances” of the project could not and should not be used as a measure of its performance and that CRCC would deliver its commitments for any current or future contracted projects according to the agreed schedules and budget.
The infrastructure project came under renewed scrutiny following a fresh probe and arrests by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) last month.
The 7.2km undersea tunnel will connect George Town’s Pangkor Road on the island and Bagan Ajam in Butterworth on the mainland. It is scheduled to begin in 2023.
The “three main roads” (formerly three paired roads) stretch from Air Itam to the Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway (5.7km), Tanjung Bungah to Teluk Bahang (10.53km), and Jalan Pangkor-Gurney Drive junction to Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway (4.1km).
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