KUALA LUMPUR, March 14 (AFP) - A Malaysian opposition leader Wednesday filed a complaint with police against managers of the state retirement fund, saying it may have been used to bail out a politically well-connected firm.

Lim Kit Siang, chairman of the Democratic Action Party, filed a complaint against the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) for alleged "criminal breach of trust and criminal misuse of public funds."

His action follows a report in Monday's Sun newspaper that the EPF and other state-linked funds are believed to have taken up the unsubscribed public portion of an initial public offering (IPO) by Time dotCom.

The telecoms firm is a unit of Time Engineering, which in turn is 47 percent owned by debt-laden but politically well-connected conglomerate Renong.

Time dotCom's IPO flopped in February with applications for only a quarter of the 572 million shares which were offered at 3.30 ringgit (86 cents).

The IPO was fully underwritten despite analysts' opinions that the stock was overvalued. The major underwriter said recently that some shares were sub-underwritten to unidentified parties.

On Monday Time dotCom made a dismal stock market debut. By the close Tuesday the share was at 2.28, down 31 percent on its IPO price.

Lim said in a statement that if the EPF and other state funds had in fact bought shares at the IPO price, they would have suffered an "astronomical loss" of 439 million ringgit (115.5 million dollars) in the first two days.In earlier statements he has questioned whether the fund came under political pressure to help salvage the IPO.

The EPF, a fund to which both workers and bosses must subscribe, has 9.7 million contributors. It had resources of more than 168 billion ringgit as of end-1999.

The fund declared a dividend of six percent for last year, its lowest for 25 years.

The Sun report has not been publicly denied. Non one at the EPF was available for comment Wednesday.