The Road Transport Department had kept the names of royalty, cabinet ministers and judges who bid for car registration license plates secret because of a cabinet rebuke in 2012.

RTD director-general Ismail Ahmad ( photo ) said the department had gotten a tongue-lashing from Putrajaya after they disclosed Johor Sultan Ibrahim Ismail's winning bid for a license plate three years ago.

"We were reprimanded by the cabinet in 2012 when we (revealed) Tuanku's (Ibrahim) tender amount, for example. We were open and transparent.

"People were making noise about the RM748,000 he bid. They put it up on Facebook and so on, chastising the sultan, 'Where did he get the money, there are many Johoreans struggling to get food',” the RTD chief had told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) during a hearing on Nov 5 last year.

Based on the transcript, however, it is unclear if Ismail had gotten the year or the bid amount mixed up, as the Johor sultan had made two exorbitant bids in both 2012 and 2014.

In 2012, Sultran Ibrahim had won the 'WWW1' car number with a bid of RM520,000. Two years later, he won the 'W1N' registration number with a bid of RM748,000.

'BMW' series hot news

The transcript of the PAC hearing during which Ismail testified was published in a PAC report which was released today.

The RTD had originally been summoned by the PAC over other matters.

However, public outrage over anonymous winners for the 'BMW' registration series bidding prompted the PAC to probe the RTD's license plate tender process as well.

The RTD's reasoning, however, did not please the PAC, who said there was nothing wrong with revealing the names behind each bid.

"Why did we not expose this? If we don't expose it, we open the room for more problematic interpretations.

"There's nothing wrong if he (Sultan Ibrahim, photo ) was brave enough to bid RM748,000; let the whole world know," PAC member and Kulim Bandar Baharu MP Abd Aziz Sheikh Fadzir said during the November hearing.

The PAC had recommended that the RTD's license plate tender process be more transparent.

It also asked RTD to display who had bid for what number, which was the practice prior to the Cabinet rebuke, before the department implements its proposed online eBidding system.