KUALA LUMPUR – After being accused by the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) of failing to declare over RM700 million worth of assets, Toh Puan Na’imah Abdul Khalid, the wife of former finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin, has applied for judicial review against the IRB director-general.
Na’imah filed the judicial review application at the Shah Alam sessions court on August 19. She was served a Notice of Additional Assessment dated August 13 by IRB, and is now seeking to quash the notice and to suspend any proceedings to enforce it.
In court filings sighted by Scoop, Na’imah said her issues with IRB began when she was questioned on January 18 this year about her increased shareholdings in Ilham Baru Sdn Bhd.
In her affidavit-in-support dated August 18, Na’imah said that during IRB’s questioning, the authority pointed to three assets used to settle loans between Ilham Baru Sdn Bhd and Welberton Private Equity Corp, claiming those properties were obtained using undeclared incomes.
Attached with her court filing was an IRB letter dated January 18, 2024, in which the board alleged that Na’imah gained an additional RM350,286,407 in ownership in Ilham Baru Sdn Bhd in 2018, while her sons Muhammed Amir Zainuddin and Muhammed Amin Zainuddin both recorded an increase of RM175,143,202 each.
“Our checks found the RM700,572,811 share ownership in Ilham Baru Sdn Bhd was funded using funds from you (Na’imah) obtained via a loan facility between Ilham Tower Sdn Bhd and Welberton Private Equity Corp using three properties owned by you.
“Our investigations found that the income used to obtain those assets was not reported to the IRB and given that you are the beneficial owner, the IRB will account for those values as income yet to be reported to the department,” the letter reads.
In another letter by the IRB dated April 2, 2024, the department listed three properties located in the United States as assets which Na’imah is accused of having failed to declare. The properties are:
– Nantasket Beach Resort Hotel, Massachusetts, valued at US$55,000,000 (RM216,469,127 at time of IRB letter)
– An office building called Chauncy Place in Boston, Massachusetts ,valued at US$48,000,000 (RM188,919,511 at time of IRB letter)
– Hotel Buckminster and Annex in Boston, Massachusetts valued at US$75,000,000 (RM295,185,173 at time of IRB letter).
Based on the Ilham Baru shares and the US properties, the IRB told Na’imah that the amount of RM700,572,811 would be adjusted into her tax computation for the 2018 assessment year as undeclared income.
In total, IRB declared RM313,820,336 as the tax amount payable by Na’imah.
However, Na’imah has argued that she has not received any foreign income in Malaysia from those overseas assets, adding that there is no legal basis for her to disclose those properties to the IRB.
Further, while the IRB suggests that those American properties were obtained in 2018, Na’imah said they were in fact purchased together with her husband in the 1990s, more than 30 years ago.
“As long as the money used to acquire the foreign assets was not derived from Malaysia, it falls outside the IRB’s purview,” Na’imah said in her affidavit.
She is also contending that although the IRB demanded documents and information relating to those assets, the law only requires taxpayers to retain documents for up to seven years.
“Should my source of income for acquiring the foreign assets be from Malaysia, the respondent would have been able to detect the movement of the money from my bank accounts.
“If the respondent contends that the capital was transferred from Malaysia to acquire these assets, it begs the question of how the alleged RM700,572,811 (the market value as of 2018) in outgoing funds went undetected,” Na’imah adds.
She also said she had, at all times, filed her taxes jointly with Daim, pointing out that in 2023, the IRB had allowed her husband to settle back taxes for the assessment years 2017 to 2019 amounting to RM31,498,069.
Na’imah said in her affidavit that given the ongoing investigations by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) into her, the IRB’s actions against her suggested a conspiracy involving the anti-graft body.
On January 23, Na’imah was charged by the MACC at the Kuala Lumpur sessions court for failing to declare her assets. She pleaded not guilty.
Her husband Daim was similarly charged on January 29, with failing to comply with an MACC notice by not declaring his assets, which included several luxury vehicles, companies and properties across Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Pahang, Negri Sembilan, Perak and Kedah. – August 26, 2024
