KUALA LUMPUR: An office building in London linked to the family of former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin has been withdrawn from sale, according to a Bloomberg report.
Based on documents the agency sighted, the building at 1 Crown Court on Cheapside, about 400m from St Paul's Cathedral, had been put up for sale for £28.6 million (RM171.41 million) last year.
Talks to close the deal collapsed after an outline deal was agreed with an investor earlier this year. According to insiders, the property has since been withdrawn from sale.
Records from the UK Land Registry, Bloomberg says, show the building is owned by a British Virgin Islands registered company called Straits Properties Ltd.
It is a company owned by a trust in which Daim's wife is a beneficiary, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported in January.
A representative for the family declined to comment.
In December last year, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) seized the Ilham Tower, a building owned by the family of the former finance minister.
The seizure notice of the 60-storey building was dated Dec 18, and was published as an advertisement on a local news portal on Dec 21.
It was signed by MACC deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib and made under Section 38(1) of the MACC Act 2009, addressed to the Property Rights Registrar, Lands and Mines Office of the Federal Territories.
Daim labelled the MACC's investigation against him and his family a "political witch hunt."
He said neither he nor his family had been involved in any corruption or wrongdoing, adding that his efforts to establish what offences he allegedly committed to warrant the probe had been rebuffed by the MACC.
Daim also accused Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim of interfering in the probe by making unsubstantiated insinuations against him.
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission responded to Daim's comments by saying it opened an investigation into him in February 2023 based on information revealed in the Pandora Papers, a trove of 11.9 million leaked documents on offshore entities that was published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2021.
In January, Daim and his wife, Toh Puan Na'imah Abdul Khalid, were charged with allegedly failing to declare assets under Section 36(2) of the MACC Act 2009. They have pleaded not guilty.