Former Auditor-General Claims Right to Be Heard Denied in Tabung Haji RCI

Tan Sri Madinah Mohamad showed up to testify. She arrived at the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia office on the appointed day, ready to answer questions before the Royal Commission of Inquiry investigating Lembaga Tabung Haji. She waited more than half an hour. No one called her name. She left without being heard.

The former Auditor-General, who held the post from 2017 to 2019, expressed her frustration publicly afterward. She had made the effort to appear, had prepared herself to give evidence about decisions made during her tenure, and had been denied the chance to do so. "My right to be heard was denied when I was not called to testify in the proceedings, even though I had already turned up and waited there," she said, according to reporting by Berita Harian.

The timing of her absence from the RCI proceedings matters because the commission's 211-page report had already leveled a specific criticism at her work: a lack of firmness in her approach to Tabung Haji's accounts. Between 2014 and 2017, the fund's financial statements had received unqualified audit opinions under her watch—a clean bill of health, in auditing terms. But the 2017 report came with two Emphasis of Matter paragraphs, flagging issues that the RCI later concluded deserved something stronger: a qualified opinion, which would have formally signaled material problems with portions of the accounts.

Madinah has defended her handling of those 2017 accounts. The Emphasis of Matter paragraphs, she argued, served their intended purpose: drawing attention to material matters identified during the audit process. She did not believe the evidence warranted the more severe step of issuing a qualified opinion. Her decision, she maintained, rested on audit evidence and international auditing standards. A qualified opinion, she pointed out, should not be issued unless specific criteria are satisfied—a technical threshold, not a judgment call.

The RCI disagreed with that assessment. The commission found that the issues present in Tabung Haji's accounts during that period crossed the line into territory that demanded a qualified opinion. The gap between what Madinah did and what the RCI believed she should have done reflects a fundamental disagreement about how to read the same evidence and the same standards.

Now Madinah finds herself in a position where she cannot directly address the commission's findings. She was not called to the witness stand. She did not get to explain her reasoning in real time, to answer questions, to be tested on her decisions. The RCI report exists as a critique she could only respond to afterward, through statements to the press. Whether her absence was an oversight, a scheduling conflict, or a deliberate choice by the commission remains unclear. What is clear is that a former auditor-general who wanted to defend her work was not given the forum to do so.