No reason for Sarbani to return to MACC, says union chief
By G Manimaran, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, April 7 — The Customs officers union has described the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) claim that Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed had returned to their office uninvited as illogical since he had no reason to be there.
Peninsular Malaysia Customs Officers Union president Ibrahim Ahmad insisted that the assistant director would not have been at the MACC office in Jalan Cochrane yesterday morning unless ordered to return to follow up on investigations.
“There is no reason for him to go on his own if he was not called in. Logically, if he is not called, he will not go,” Ibrahim told The Malaysian Insider last night.
He said nobody, especially those under investigation, would go to the anti-graft body’s offices without being summoned.
Yesterday, MACC investigations director Datuk Mustafar Ali told reporters that Ahmad Sarbani had returned to the MACC building at 8.26am without an appointment and had requested to meet with the investigation officer without stating why.
Sarbani had already given his statement to MACC and was released from custody at 12.30pm on Saturday.
He had been remanded on March 29 following an MACC-led swoop on a Customs syndicate that it said was worth at least RM3 billion in unpaid taxes, resulting in the arrests of 62 officers.
The chief investigator said an officer then accompanied the Customs officer to a room in the office before leaving to collect the case file, but found him missing when he returned.
Sarbani’s body was later found on the badminton court on the first floor, but friends who visited the mortuary where his body was being kept yesterday said it was impossible that the 56-year-old Customs assistant director had committed suicide over the MACC investigations.
Ibrahim also said he was not defending those who were corrupt but stated that the MACC must be professional in its investigations.
“What has happened to Teoh Beng Hock has now happened to a Customs officer. This does not make sense,” he said, referring to the DAP aide who was found dead on July 16, 2009 at the then Selangor MACC office in Shah Alam.
An ongoing Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) is investigating MACC operational procedures and the death of the former aide to Selangor executive councillor Ean Yong Hian Wah after a coroner’s inquest returned an open verdict of neither suicide nor homicide.
It is understood that on the night before his death, Ahmad Sarbani had been playing tennis in the Kelana Jaya Customs quarters where he told his friends he had been ordered to return to the MACC office the next morning.
A childhood friend of Ahmad Sarbani’s told The Malaysian Insider yesterday that the officer would not have taken his own life as he had maintained he was not guilty.
