PKR tells Putrajaya to clean up MACC
By Clara Chooi, The Malaysian Insider
KUCHING, April 6 — PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail demanded today the government “clean up the mess” in its graftbusting body, expressing disgust that yet another death had occurred in the middle of its investigations.
Dr Wan Azizah added the latest tragedy would further shame the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), which has already been the subject of public scorn following the death of political aide Teoh Beng Hock.
“It is a shocking tragedy, and what’s more, it happened in the midst of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Teoh’s death,” she told a media conference at the party’s Kuching operations centre in Satok here this afternoon.
Dr Wan Azizah was responding to reports on the death of a customs officer Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed, 56, who plunged today from the third floor of the MACC building on Jalan Cochrane in Kuala Lumpur where he was being investigated for over a billion ringgit in unpaid taxes.
The death comes even as the RCI is being conducted into the anti-graft body’s operating procedures when interrogating Teoh, who also fell to his death from an MACC building.
Teoh was found dead on July 16, 2009 on the fifth floor of Plaza Masalam, Shah Alam, where the Selangor MACC office had then been located.
“We view this as something very serious… it will affect the institutions of governance in the country.
“What kind of indicator is this when the MACC institution, which is in the midst of an inquiry itself, faces yet another tragedy. And then it is shown also during the inquiry that MACC officers are downloading porn in the middle of an investigation,” said Dr Wan Azizah.
She went on to describe the situation as “nasty”, adding that the today’s tragedy coupled with the testimonies given during the Teoh RCI would erode the people’s trust in the agency.
“This is an institution that is supposed to care for us. I do not think this is a small matter… we have to do something.
