KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 — Former foreign minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Abdullah today urged the government to do more for the Palestinian people by speeding up their investigations into several NGOs whose accounts have been frozen.

He said the government had frozen the bank accounts of three NGOs who had collected aid money for the Palestinian people, but said not all of the money was gained illicitly.

He said instead of Putrajaya taking its time to investigate them, speed it up and separate the legitimate money from the illicit one and send it to Palestine.

"To the Malaysian government, I hope investigations into the three NGOs will be sped up because there is money in some of those accounts that are clean and is in the millions.

"If you want to investigate go ahead, but release the legitimate money and don’t just let it sit in the bank account. Let’s try to get that aid to the people as we need to continue to show our support to the Palestinians,” he said today when attending a solidarity with Gaza event in Kuala Lumpur.

One of the companies in question is Bangi-based Aman Palestin.

Its chief executive officer Awang Suffian Awang Piut, and its executive director Abdullah Zaik Abd Rahman were charged in February with 19 counts of cheating and 52 counts of criminal breaches of trust each, in addition to being jointly charged with 19 counts of money laundering — involving a sum of RM39,530,300.96 in total.

Apart from that, Saifuddin said the government should show more support for the Palestine cause instead of just making statements.

"We must support (Palestine) in a better way, issuing statements alone coming from ministers is not sufficient. We can do more.

"The minimum we can do is to post or organise a special sitting of Parliament. The least we can do is show openly and in our most vocal manner our support politically as well for the people of Gaza and I doubt any MP will not want to do this,” he added.