The MACC is playing pucks with the rakyat (final part)
The Third Force
Journalism largely consists in saying “Dato’ Seri Pakiam is Dead” to people who never knew that Dato’ Seri Pakiam was alive. It is the art of making monkeys out of readers who hunger for nothing more than the latest scoop in conspiracy. And the editorials WSJ and Sarawak Report ran on the 2nd of July 2015 proved just that. It bore nuggets of information that were pieced together to tell a story that contrasted with the one WSJ had told the month before.
In a June 15th editorial, WSJ claimed that funds from 1MDB were piled into a war-chest that was used by Najib to finance his election campaign. The report insinuated that the Prime Minister may have propped his campaign against charitable organisations to siphon 1MDB funds into his electoral coffers.
“On the 15th of June 2015, WSJ ran an editorial that spoke of 1MDB funds being used to finance Najib’s 2013 election campaign. But 17 days later, the New York based daily was telling us an entirely different story”
And yet again, the reports (the one published on the 15th of June and those that were published on the 2nd of July) offered nothing that was any more substantive than sexed up details and crumbs of information, some of which were said to have originated from forgeries. The contrast in flavour and tone between the WSJ releases suggested a random and spasmodic leak of information, possibly from more than one source.
But more than that, the editorials bore a sordid stench that stank right beneath Clare Brown’s nostrils. There is reason to believe that Clare may have been the go-between who consigned top secret documents she came into possession of to the New York daily. You’ll have to admit that it cranks the confidence level right up when two seemingly unrelated sources hum to the same tune.
Be that as it may, the gaps in coherence within and contradictions between publications suggested that WSJ had put pieces of information it received together and glued them on bunkum. But the people seemed to buy into the bunkum almost as easily as they bought into the tales that came out of Tony Pua’s mouth. According to Pua, dumble deed um and daa daa dum…whatever that means.
The former AG did not take the reports lying down in his bed. No. He sat halfway up to face off with his biggest opponent; his scruples. Two days after WSJ and Sarawak Report rolled the print on the editorials, Gani Patail spoke of documents that were confiscated and delivered to him for review.
He was referring to documents that were handed to him by the Special Task Force. The investigative squad had called a swoop on the companies that were named by Sarawak Report and WSJ in their shocking exposes. The entities were said to be gateways on the local front through which some millions had transited and ended up in the Prime Minister’s personal accounts.
“I confirm receiving documents related to 1MDB, including those associated with the alleged channelling of funds into Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak’s accounts,” he said.
The Special Task Force comprised the MACC, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), BNM and Gani himself. As previously mentioned (refer part 2: http://www.malaysia-today.net/the-macc-is-playing-pucks-with-the-rakyat-part-2/), the task force personified a congenital and constitutional anomaly when it was found to have been commissioned in lightning speed and without Cabinet approval.
But the plot kept getting thicker.
Just fourteen days after Sarawak Report and WSJ ran the gamut of conspiracy against Najib, both Rashpal and Clare were reported to have met up in London. The meeting put an entirely new complexion to what could have been the Rembrandt of political conspiracy. The only difference with a real Rembrandt was this; the conspirators were piloting a plane they hadn’t a clue how to land.
“Rashpal may have been wise to confidential information by virtue of his relationship with Jessica. By agreeing to meet Clare in London, he automatically becomes a prime suspect in what may be the nation’s biggest case of political espionage”
By agreeing to meet Clare and given his credentials, Rashpal sleepwalked right into the cuffs of justice when he became a prime suspect in a high-profile case of political espionage. Circumstances made him liable to charges of criminal breach in terms of provisions under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) of 1972. According to Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK), both Clare and Rashpal may have met on the eve of Hari Raya this year to discuss ways in which the latter could hand over classified MACC information pertaining to the Prime Minister’s wife, Datin Sri Rosmah Mansor, to Sarawak Report.
RPK took the zippity right out of Rashpal’s doo dah. It is now highly suspect that Rashpal had served through Jessica as Gani’s liaison with Clare. It is further suspect that the two were in touch since June 2015, weeks before WSJ brought to surface the purported embezzlement racket.
What’s the real deal with the Special Task Force?
Was the Special Task Force, the hundreds (or possibly thousands) of pages in probe documents, the dozens of suspects and witnesses who were questioned, and the millions in taxpayer ringgit that may have been spent investigating 1MDB and the RM 2.6 billion controversy, part of a political conspiracy?
Following is a descriptive analysis of the skeletons I think you’d likely want to hear about before they turn into ashes in Gani’s closet:
When the former AG first announced the task force on the 25th of March 2015, he told us that it was instituted to probe into 1MDB and its attendant problems. It didn’t take long for him to assemble the team then; the Special Task Force was established barely six days after Sarawak Report ran an editorial that spoke of a conspiracy to siphon off 1MDB funds.
In what seemed to be a ‘twist of a badly constructed plot’, Gani spoke again of a task force on the 4th of July 2015. And let us be clear of one thing; he was not referring to ‘the’ task force, but ‘a’ task force. On that day, he implied that a task force was out to put a spoke in someone’s wheel, presumably the persons who carted RM 2.6 billion into Najib’s vaults and the man of the day himself, Najib.
Interestingly, this came a curious eight days after Justo had taken the wraps off the Clare-Kooi Ong-Kay Tat triangle of deceit at the Bangkok Remand Prison. What was more curious was the fact that Gani attempted to resurrect what was already alive and kicking; the task force.
In both cases, ‘lightning Gani’ came out to announce the Special Task Force in lightning speed. And it seemed curious that ‘lightning Gani’ found the need to accommodate BNM, which really was not a law enforcement agency. And before I forget, he did that in lightning speed too, and managed to assemble five Tan Sris under one roof, and not to mention, his captainship.
“Why was there a need for Gani to accommodate Zeti into the Special Task Force, which functioned more like a law enforcement unit than anything else?”
It is said that in politics, people have relatively short term memories. And as one author had recently put it, 100 days is more than enough to get people to forget stuff that may have otherwise been important to them. When Gani attempted to ‘resurrect’ the task force in the minds of the people, 96 days had lapsed from his first announcement. And 96 is a number just four days short of a hundred.
Aren’t numbers just good fun?
In terms of ripping it off, Gani stole one from the gypper. He tried to get you to forget that the Special Task Force was all about 1MDB and not the alleged RM 2.6 billion controversy. But what was Gani trying so desperately to hide?
It seems that the sudden ‘about turn’ in his convictions were tied to Justo’s confession (discussed in part 2, refer http://www.malaysia-today.net/the-macc-is-playing-pucks-with-the-rakyat-part-2/). The former PetroSaudi employee occasioned a full scaled probe by Thai authorities into a conspiracy that involved Clare and a good number of Malaysian politicians, law enforcement officers and others who were bound by various statutes of law.
By then, authorities on both ends of the border had their radars locked on Kooi Ong and Kay Tat, persons who were said to be braided in a lock-ditch pattern with Tun Dr. Mahathir and his cohorts to destroy Najib and government.
The 1MDB-Low edifice was about to crumble right under Gani’s nose. Knowing this, the former AG and his confederates may have gotten together to hatch a plot which they tore right out of a whodunit bestseller. Perhaps this explains why Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz was part of a task force that was primarily law enforcement in nature when in fact; BNM was not a law enforcement agency.
Suffice to say, time was of the essence. Gani couldn’t risk authorities prodding their rods through the ingresses of the MACC and fishing Rashpal and Jessica out along with his secrets.
It’s highly likely that Gani found the need to cast aspersions on Najib as fast as Tony Pua could peel a banana and feed it to a monkey. Gani knew that insinuating doubt against Najib and government was not enough. The time had come to implicate Najib directly in a scam of felonious proportions to dim the spotlight on Justo’s confession. And if there were any other reason to contrive a new conspiracy, it would have been to avert attention from the charge sheet Thai authorities were inking on Justo in haste.
The Special Task Force may have been nothing but a tactical ruse by Gani to lead investigators astray and on a wild goose chase. Gani occasioned a swoop fest to avert attention from the real deal; the leak of confidential information to WSJ and his flings with Jessica, and not to mention, hers with Rashpal.
Logic has it that Clare would have sought to fill the gaps of coherence in the information both Kay Tat and Kooi Ong had appropriated off Justo at a round table meeting in Singapore. It is entirely plausible, a priori, that she met Rashpal on more than one occasion before the 2nd of July 2015 to solicit documents pertaining to the probe on 1MDB.
Finally, before we end the article and this series, let us review the timeline of events as they have been discussed:
This one is for you, Tony Pua
In part 3, I spoke of an egomaniac, who on the 13th of August 2015, urged the Prime Minister to give himself up to the MACC for indulging in activities that were detrimental to Parliamentary democracy. I have a bone to pick with Pua on that matter. But first, let us look into Section 124B of the Penal Code.
The terms of provisions that pertain to the section were laid down by Dato’ Seri Muhamed Nazri Abdul Aziz himself in a speech he made out to Parliament on the 17th of April 2012. According to Nazri, activities that were detrimental to Parliamentary Democracy were those carried out by a person or a group of persons designed to overthrow or undermine Parliamentary Democracy by violent or unconstitutional means.
And that most certainly includes the leak of top secret information by MACC officials to persons other than those legally eligible to be in possession of the information, with intent to subvert government. But MACC Director of Special Operations Dato’ Bahri Mohamed Zin seemed to have a different think.
On the 3rd of August 2015, Bahri had cast insidious aspersions against Najib when he expressed a raging ambivalence of disbelief over the arrest of the commission’s Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP), Ahmad Sazilee Abdul Khairy. According to Bahri, there may have been hidden hands at work behind the arrest, requisite to investigations under Section 124B of the Penal Code.
“Suddenly our Deputy Public Prosecutor was detained at 1 am. I’m baffled at how this could have happened. This is madness and I feel someone had forced the police to do so,” he said.
Bahri was speaking out of jurisdiction. Not only did his statement border on libel, he may now be in contempt of Parliamentary Democracy, given that his statement was prejudiced and tended towards insurrection against the established order. In other words, Bahri was being seditious. He failed to consider that the arrest of the DPP was consequential to Parliamentary Acts, the most notable among them being the Police Act of 1947.
His statement bore heavily on the integrity and credibility of the MACC, what with him being its Director of Special Operations. More importantly, Bahri had taken advantage of his position in an agency that was entrusted to fight graft. He flared partisan emotions among the public over the arrest many now are saying was intended to kill the messenger.
What the hell are you talking about, Pua? Are you off your rocker? You’re implying that Najib should be found guilty until proven innocent. To date, there isn’t a shred of evidence that suggests fraud or criminal complicity on the part of Najib in any of the allegations that have been hurled against him. On the other hand, Bahri has clearly flaunted the law.
Why the fook are you after Najib and not Bahri? Have you capitulated with Gani or the two guys in the picture below to topple Najib by hook or by crook? Who the fook do you think you are?
The end
The MACC is playing pucks with the rakyat, part 3
The MACC is playing pucks with the rakyat, part 2
The MACC is playing pucks with the rakyat, part 1
