Ghost of Mongolian model continues to haunt Malaysian government
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun
The ghost of murdered Mongolian model and translator Altantuya Shaariibuu refuses to lie quiet.
For the Malaysian government of prime minister Najib Tun Razak a line appeared to have been drawn under the sordid and politically explosive affair when two of his bodyguards from his days as defence minister were convicted last year of the young woman’s murder in the jungle outside Kuala Lumpur in October 2006.
But in the last few weeks two events have revived simmering questions about the connection of the murder to a $1.2 billion contract to buy two French Scorpene-class diesel submarines ordered while Najib was defence minister.
Najib’s friend and adviser on defence matters, Abdul Razak Baginda, whose wife’s company was paid a questionable $150 million over the submarine contract, had recently brought a love affair with Shaariibuu to an acrimonious end when she was abducted and murdered.
During the months’ long trial of the two police bodyguards every effort was made to ensure prime minister Najib’s name didn’t figure in evidence.
And in a move that astonished legal experts, the judge early on in the trial exonerated Baginda of any responsibility. He promptly fled to Britain where he remains.
The stage management of the trial convinced Malaysian human rights groups that it would be pointless to try to resolve the Shaariibuu case in the senior courts in Kuala Lumpur.
One of those Malaysian human rights groups, Suaram, has therefore pressed for a judicial inquiry in France, where there are a number of investigations underway of the notorious willingness of state-owned defence companies to pay bribes or other inducements in order to gain arms contracts.
In this case Parisian prosecutors started inquiries in March focusing on the $150 million paid to a Malaysian company called Perimekar, which was set up just before Najib signed in 2002 the deal to buy the two Scorpene submarines from the French state-owned shipbuilder DCN.
Perimekar was ostensibly hired to provide “coordination and support services” for the contract, but no evidence has been produced to show the company had the skills for such tasks or ever attempted to perform them.
