PETALING JAYA, MALAYSIA: The Public Complaints Bureau is waiting for Bank Negara to conclude its investigation on the issue of "hijacked accounts" that has been on the rise lately.

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Senator T. Murugiah, who alleged last week that funds from 60 to 70 bank accounts were being siphoned off monthly, said he did not want to speculate.

"We leave it to Bank Negara to investigate and we will send a report to the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak," he said after visiting SK(T) Vivekananda yesterday.

"The problem began in 2006 and we don't know how much money has been lost or how it will be compensated."

He said he was not trying to dent the image of local banks but trying to save the people and their money.

He said he was willing to help the police in their investigations.

Murugiah added that after highlighting the matter in the media, he had received a lot of emails from the public who had been duped.

"In one case, a victim had tried to withdraw money from an automated teller machine but received only the receipt, not the cash.

"When he updated his account, it revealed that the money had been withdrawn."

Murugiah said he was unhappy that most banks did not assist victims.

He said a bank had assured him that it had found a solution to the problem and was confident of it implementing it soon.

He added the bank had also told him that it had identified the banks in Indonesia where the monies were channelled to but were unable to trace the culprit.

In Kota Kinabalu, Bernama reported that the Consumers' Association of Sabah and Labuan (Cash) has called on Bank Negara or the Finance Ministry to present a white paper on the hijacked bank accounts.

Its president, Datuk Patrick Sindu, said this issue had been around for a while and that Cash had received several complaints on similar problems.

"There is no point of just talking about the scam.

We need something concrete especially with the global economic crisis we are dealing with now."

-- New Straits Times / Asia News Network