Opinion: The Lies of Malaysia’s Attorney General
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| Without Fear or Favor he say! |
When a Malaysian deputy
prosecutor named Kevin Morais disappeared on Sept. 4 last year after
leaving his condominium in Kuala Lumpur on his way to work, the rumor
spread that the 55-year-old Morais, who was gay, probably had tired of
his job with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and had left with
his lover, probably for London. And, newly-minted Attorney General
Mohamed Apandi Ali said, Morais had nothing to do with the controversial
MACC probe into Prime Minister Najib Razak’s tangled financial affairs.
It is widely
believed that that probe got former Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail
fired from his job in July, to be replaced by Apandi Ali, an UMNO stooge
and loyalist who served in a variety of different capacities, including
as the judge who ruled that Christians couldn’t use the word “Allah” to
describe god.
What nobody
expected was that Morais would turn up. The rumor about his
disappearance was put to the lie when a CCTV camera, by chance, caught
Morais’s car being rammed on a Kuala Lumpur street and him being dragged
from it. Morais was later found in an oil drum filled with cement in a
river in Subang Jaya, a Kuala Lumpur suburb. His burned car was found in
a palm oil plantation in Perak.
The police said it was an open and shut case. Morais had been killed by
confederates of an army doctor in revenge for prosecuting a case
against him.
That has been
put to the lie as well. Morais’s brother in Atlanta, Ga. in the US
turned up in Kuala Lumpur to issue a statement saying Morais was not
only working on the Najib case, but he was either leading or co-leading
the prosecution, and that he had sent him a USB drive containing
information on the case. That has been corroborated by other sources in
Kuala Lumpur.
It has since
become clear that Morais in addition was one of the sources of deeply
detailed information on Najib’s finances that was being fed to Clare
Rewcastle Brown, the editor and writer of Sarawak Report. So rather than
being killed for revenge by an angry army doctor, it appears that he
was killed for being a whistle-blower.
So why was
Apandi Ali, the country’s chief law enforcement officer, lying about
Kevin Morais’s activities? Why was the lie spread that he had left town
with a homosexual lover? Why did the attorney general’s office say
Morais had nothing to do with the Najib case?
Apandi Ali has
now denounced a story by Sarawak Report – and a similar Asia Sentinel
story quoting Sarawak Report –that the MACC had forwarded 37 criminal
charges against Najib for prosecution. He has said he sent the case back
to the MACC for further work. Is Apandi also lying about that as well? Given the clear lies about Morais, who does the reader want to believe? Mohamad Apandi Ali or Asia Sentinel and Sarawak Report?
Apandi Ali says
he has sent the report back to the MACC for revision. He retires
officially in three weeks, meaning he wants to pass the hot potato to
his successor, expected to be another UMNZO lawyer, Mohamad Shafie
Abdullah.
The story has
earned a ban for Asia Sentinel in Malaysia from the communications
ministry, which has issued a notice saying “This website is not
available in Malaysia because it violates the national laws.” The ban
has holes in it, but, say sources in Kuala Lumpur, it is likely to
tighten
It seems more
likely that it is the Malaysian government that violates the national
laws, not only in the case involving Kevin Morais but in a long list of
other cases. For a second one, try the murder of Hussain Najadi, the
retired founder of AMBank Malaysia, who was gunned down in a parking lot
in 2013. Although law enforcement officials said he was shot in a
dispute over a Hindu temple property matter, Hussain’s son Pascal has
charged that his father was assassinated because he said he wouldn’t
play along with financial irregularities involving the United Malays
National Organization prior to his death, refusing to orchestrate a
multi-billion ringgit property deal connected to the Kuala Lumpur City
Center. On one occasion, he told his son that Prime Minister Najib Razak
was “lining his pockets with billions of ringgit with no consideration
for the future of the country.”
A gunman was
almost immediately arrested. The property dispute story was widely
accepted by everybody but Pascal Najadi. The supposed mastermind, one
Lim Yuen Soo, went on the run for two years. But Lim, a Melaka gangster
and nightclub owner, appeared to be hiding in plain sight. In fact, he
was part owner of the Active Force Security Services Sdn Bhd. with the
former Malacca Police Chief Mohd Khasni Mohd Nor.
When police
caught up with Lim at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, arresting him
on an Interpol warrant, they held him incognito for eight days before
they turned him loose for “lack of evidence.” But that story raised more
questions than it answered. If he could be turned loose for lack of
evidence, why wasn’t the original case reopened to find out who had
actually paid the gunman to kill Hussain?
As to the probe
of Najib’s finances, it is clear from what has emerged in Sarawak Report
that he may be a cheap crook as well as a thief of titanic proportions,
given the huge amounts of money that apparently have been siphoned from
1Malaysia Development Bhd., the troubled state-backed investment fund. The
MACC, in its probe, found him to be using credit cards from SRC
International, a Middle Eastern company supposedly involved in oil
exploration that was funded by 1MDB. Najib ran up bills of RM449,000 on
an SRC Visa card and another RM2.8 million on an SRC MasterCard in
August 2014. That in effect was public money, spent on hotels, meals,
jewelry, and other personal items in Italy and Monaco.
He is already
believed to have taken millions in kickbacks on defense contracts and
purchases during his years as defense minister, particularly on the
purchase of two French submarines as well as purchase of Sukhoi jet
fighters at vastly inflated costs and other contracts. Yet, despite the
tens of millions stolen, he still had to use credit cards from a
publicly owned company to fund his wife’s vast needs for jewelry and
handbags.
It was Najib’s
years as defense minister that ended up in the 2006 death of the
Mongolian translator and party girl, Altantuya Shaariibuu, at the hands
of two of Najib’s bodyguards. It has long been assumed that Altantuya
was attempting to blackmail Najib’s close friend, Abdul Razak Baginda,
over what she knew about the purchase of those submarines.
So in the long
run, who do you believe about the deaths of Kevin Morais and Hussain
Najadi and Altantuya Shaariibuu, and the subsequent statements by
Mohamad Apandi Ali over the MACC probe? The
Malaysian government? Or Sarawak Report and Asia Sentinel, both of
which are now banned in Malaysia? Neither publication is likely to stop
investigating them.
