In lawsuit against AG, lawyer seeks to fix the system

Ida Lim, The Malay Mail

Where does one find the courage to sue the Attorney-General, the top government lawyer in the country, for alleged malicious prosecution, prosecutorial misconduct and abuse of power?

After successfully clearing his name in the courts, senior lawyer Rosli Dahlan has now filed the suit in hopes of fixing the system, despite having all his faith in it “shattered” and “destroyed” by what he claims was a concerted conspiracy against him by the top prosecutor and the country’s anti-corruption agency.

“It has to be done. Someone has to do it, to try to put the system right. Even if we fail, at least we have tried,” Rosli told The Malay Mail Onlinerecently, while admitting to being an idealist who passionately believes in justice, truth and the rule of law.

Rosli traces his suit against Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail and 10 others to where it all started in 2007, where he had the most “frightening” and “humiliating” experience of his life at the hands of the government’s anti-graft body then known as the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA).

On Oct 11, 2007, two days before Hari Raya Aidilfitri, ACA officers came to Rosli’s office, asking him to go with them to their headquarters but left after he said he would meet them after the holiday ended.

The officers returned later at 2pm, shouting and arresting him in front of his staff, even handcuffing him.

“But they didn’t take my statement until it was 8 o’clock at night, six hours later… by then my hands were all bruised and bloodied,” he said, also adding that the ACA did not interview him as a witness before his arrest, despite his attempts to co-operate with them.

After his statement was recorded, he was put in a cell until the next day, and was denied the right to see his lawyers and even his wife and children. Rosli said that his watch and mobile phone were also taken away from him.

“Immediately at that point I imagined what could happen to someone who’s a civilian? What could happen to Teoh Beng Hock? What could have happened? It would have been frightening, because here I am a lawyer, it’s still frightening to me, what would it be to you?” he asked, referring to the July 2009 death of the DAP political aide after being questioned as a witness in a graft probe.

That night, Rosli felt as if he had sunk to the lowest point in his life, feeling as if God had “forsaken” him, even as he felt humiliated by the treatment he received.

Later he found out that his wife and young children had waited until past midnight at the ACA headquarters to see him, with his wife crying herself to sleep after hearing that he would be charged in court the next day. At this point of the story, Rosli said his wife’s account made him “very sad” and “angry.”

The next morning, Rosli was charged for allegedly failing to comply with ACA notices to declare his assets, and he related his wife’s narration of how sad she felt seeing him paraded in court like a “common criminal” in the presence of the media, in what she felt was an attempt to shame and embarrass him.

Six years on, Rosli still remembers every scene in this nightmare vividly, and the constant tone was one of disbelief.

“Not once in my life as a lawyer having practised for 25 years then could I imagine then that could have happened to me… in fact I was wondering what had I done wrong actually. I couldn’t understand,” the 52-year-old senior partner of one of Malaysia’s most established law firms said.

Rosli’s case was tied to his client, the former Commercial Crimes Investigation Department (CCID) director Datuk Ramli Yusuff, with the lawyer then implicated of allegedly holding RM27 million worth of assets for his client.

But Rosli points out that Ramli himself was then not even identified or charged, while he was “arrested, brutalised and charged” while acting as the lawyer for the senior policeman.

And by March 2010, the main suspect Ramli was already acquitted, Rosli points out, with his own attempts to get the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (the new name for ACA)  to withdraw the 2007 charge against him proving unsuccessful.

“If I was a witness to someone’s wrongdoing and if that person is already not guilty, acquitted, should I also not be not guilty? And that is what I couldn’t understand,” he said, while also maintaining his stand in his September 20, 2007 statutory declaration that he does not hold any assets for Ramli.

Even after Rosli himself was acquitted in December 20, 2010, the “mocking” about his assets lingered on until today, and he also spoke sadly of acquaintances and friends testifying in court of their doubts over his honesty after reading news reports hinting that he had allegedly hidden RM27 million for Ramli.

Saying that his family was now “slowly recovering”, he hinted that the episode was so “hurtful” that they did not discuss it, adding that his wife’s recent witness statement caused him to realise that the “impact was very deep.”

“Of course when you win, things change, but just imagine those five years, having the AG appealing, there was fear, the children had fears, would something happen to their father?” he said, referring to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC)’s appeal against his acquittal, which it subsequently dropped in August 2, 2012 after Rosli filed two affidavits to disclose what he alleged were blackmail attempts by the MACC.

Rosli said the ordeal took its toll on his confidence, explaining that this was due to his arrest for what he called a “non-offence” despite his efforts to co-operate with the ACA and comply with the law.

“That eroded a large part of my confidence for the past five years. That’s why I couldn’t function well, I couldn’t advise people properly, I took less cases because I was worried I was advising wrongly,” he said, although he has since successfully won a high-profile judicial review suit filed by Berjaya Books and two employees of Borders Bookstore.

But is Rosli suing the AG out of anger and revenge? 

He admits to being an angry and sad man then, but now all he wants to do is seek closure and move on.

Tired of the years of court cases—including three defamation suits against newspapers which he won—that has also cost him hundreds of thousands of ringgit, Rosli said his offer to settle the matter with the MACC was turned down.

“I was waiting in some way they will come around and say ‘yes we have done you some wrong, let’s put this matter to an end, let’s settle the matter’ but they didn’t want to settle,” he said when explaining why he had waited until last month to file his suit.

Claiming that there was “no independence” between the different government bodies, Rosli cited former MACC panel member Tan Sri Robert Phang’s sworn statement last year, where the latter said the MACC was prevented by the AG from discontinuing the 2007 case despite being aware that it would result in an acquittal.

“It is no longer out of anger but to achieve closure to something that started six years ago because clearly what happened indicated that between the MACC, police, AG Chambers unfortunately there’s no check and balance,” Rosli said.

He said he is now seeking justice not just for himself, but also wants to prevent those in power from causing others to suffer the same fate as him.

“The recent suit is about putting checks and balances against abuses by those whom I considered to have failed and breached the trust that is reposed in them.

“And if I don’t file such a suit, they will think there’s no consequences to what they do and that is why I sued them personally as well. When you hold office, you can’t hide behind the powers of your office,” he said, stressing that public powers must be used in good faith and that those in power should not abuse the system.

Rosli’s suit was filed on November 22 against 11 respondents including the AG Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, former Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Musa Hassan, current Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed, former ACA head of prosecutions Datuk Nordin Hassan, MACC director of prosecutions Datuk Abdul Razak Musa.

Three MACC officers—Kevin Anthony Morais, Chew Kam Soon, Saiful Ezral Ariffin—and the police force, the MACC and the government were also sued in the same suit, where Rosli is seeking damages totalling RM47 million or other amount to be fixed by the court, as well as special damages of RM750,000.

The MACC replaced ACA as the country’s anti-graft body in 2009.