PI Bala dares AG to charge him
(The Malaysian Insider) – Self-exiled private investigator P. Balasubramaniam has dared the Attorney General (AG) to press charges against him for crossing the law, in a bid to keep alive investigations into the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder.
Better known as PI Bala, the detective resurfaced recently to write an open letter to Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail asking to be taken to court for making a false statutory declaration (SD) two years ago implicating prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his family.
The prime minister has denied all the allegations.
The former police Special Branch officer said he was surprised the AG had closed the file on his case earlier this year despite the large amount of evidence gathered by the police and material available in the public domain.
“It has therefore come as a great surprise to me to discover that you have been unable to decipher any wrongdoing from the enormous amount of evidence the police must have been able to accumulate from their investigations,” said the detective hired by Abdul Razak Baginda, who is a close friend to Najib.
In the undated letter that appeared in the Malaysia Today portal yesterday, Bala said he had cooked up the contents of a second statutory declaration (SD) within days of disclosing salacious information linking the PM to the murdered Altantuya.
He urged the AG to immediately reopen the probe and even “volunteered” to help.
“Please permit me to assist you… Let me admit to you that I did sign a false statutory declaration. Yes. I did. I signed a false statutory declaration,” Bala said.
“It was the second one, not the first one. The first one was entirely truthful. The second one was a complete pack of lies. I admit this.
“If you are unable to ascertain this information which I have just provided to you directly, please feel free to contact me at this email address [email protected] and I shall forward to you a copy of the video recorded interview I had in the presence of my lawyers in Singapore last November, and a copy of the transcript thereof,” he added.
The man who fled the country two years ago said the second SD was “prepared by some unknown person(s) and I was forced by very thinly veiled threats and intimidation to sign it.”
A statutory declaration (SD) is a legal document that holds something to be the truth and is witnessed by a commissioner of oaths, an authorized officer of the court.
Under Malaysian law, making a false one is a serious offence that can land a person in jail for up to three years and a fine.
Bala whose current whereabouts remain a mystery said he was willing to return home to stand trial, but demanded the AG issue a guarantee for his safety “as there are some people who would prefer that I was not around.”
He also demanded the AG include several witnesses to testify in court and named prominent public figures, including Datuk Nazim Razak, the younger brother of the PM and his wife.
The Altantuya murder scandal remains a widely-discussed topic four years after it exploded into the public sphere.
