OPEN CHALLENGE TO DENNIS IGNATIUS

Eric See

Mr Ignatius says that many Malaysians are, of course, baffled why anyone would push for a pardon for someone who was found guilty of breach of trust, abuse of power and money laundering and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment and a fine of RM210 million and remains unrepentant to boot.

Okay, let me educate you a bit on the SRC case since you clearly did not follow the court proceedings.

Firstly, Najib was charged with breach of trust/abuse of power because he attended a cabinet meeting in the year 2011 to approve a government guarantee for SRC to borrow from KWAP which he allegedly “stole” 4 1/2 years later in late 2014 and early 2015.

Yes, his breach of trust/abuse of power was because he sat in that Cabinet meeting. He was not the minister who recommended, proposed and put up that cabinet paper to give guarantees for SRC.

The fact that no one would wait 4 1/2 years to “steal” not withstanding, let it be known that the subsequent MACC investigations (as contained in the letter from MACC to the Chief Justice in early 2023 concerning judge Nazlan’s alleged wrongdoings) showed that the RM42mil was not from KWAP but from a Maybank loan taken by the company Putrajaya Perdana and paid to SRC at a time when Nazlan was Chief General Counsel and Company Secretary for Maybank.

In fact, it was Maybank at that time too who recommended 1MDB to set-up 1MDB contrary to Nazlan’s written judgement that Najib created SRC with the intention to steal money.

Since it wasn’t KWAP money then the abuse of power and breach of trust predicate charges should never have stood.

And since there is no predicate offence then the AMLA charges of RM42mil should also not stand.

But strangely in defending Nazlan, the Chief Justice ruled that “source of funds” is not relevant to AMLA charges.

In any case, Najib never stoled the RM42mil for personal gains or for his personal use. Nazlan even ruled that Najib’s main offence is that it was not his right to give that RM42mil to charity.

For this, Najib was fined RM5 for every RM1 that he gave away to charity thus 5 X RM42mil = RM210mil. That’s your answer.

And this RM42mil is on top of the funds of at least RM642mil that Najib had legitimately received from Saudi Arabia including direct transfers from the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Finance which Najib also gave away to charity and for CSR programs- a fact confirmed by SWIFT documents and testimonies in court from senior MACC, senior PDRM and Ambank itself.

Which begs the question why would someone give away RM642mil which he could have legitimately pocketed for himself but would want to steal RM42mil?

The answer was later given in court early last year after Najib was convicted and sent to jail for the SRC case when the Ambank officer Joanna Yu admitted in court that Najib may not know have known the true status of his bank accounts as she had conspired with others to hide it from him.

I could go on and on and on about how screwed-up and unfair the judgements are but if you are truly a person who is all for justice, fairness and the rule of law then I leave you with these 5 questions.

Give me reasonable answers to all of them and I concede that you are right and that Najib does not deserve a pardon and should rot in jail.

Q1. Are the acts by Mahathir and Tommy to breach the Judicial Appointments Act (JAC 2009) when appointing those senior judges right after GE14 (after he illegally asked the existing Chief Justice and President of the Court of Appeal to quit) considered as fair, just and consistent with the rule of law?

Q2. Provide an example from any country in the world where, subsequent to Mahathir and Tommy breaching the JAC 200, the judge handling the highest-profile criminal case in a country is suddenly replaced with the most junior judge without any criminal trial experience after the trial has commenced.

That happened in Najib’s case, right where Nazlan who was just appointed a year ago as a high court judge was suddenly transfered from the commercial courts to the criminal courts to take over Najib’s SRC case despite having ZERO criminal case experience.

The fact that prior to him being a judge, he was the Chief General Counsel and Company Secretary in Maybank and had personally dealt with 1MDB related matters and meetings should have automatically disqualified him in hte first place from the SRC case. He should have recused himself but he didn’t.

Q3. Provide an example from any country in the world where a defendant is sentenced without legal representation.

This happened in the Federal Court, right? And that is why the lead judge in the SRC review panel who is also the Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak had argued so strongly that a great injustice had fallen on Najib and the correct move is to acquit and release Najib.

Q4. Provide an example from any country where a judge states that the source of funds is irrelevant to Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) offenses.

Mind-boggling? And yet this is what the Chief Justice said and then repeated by PMX in his answer in the Dewan Negara in their attempt to defend Nazlan’s breach of ethics due to his conflict of interest in the SRC case.

Q5. Name me a country where the judgement for a court case had already been writen even before the prosecutors had finished submitting and the defence had even started.

And yet this happened in Najib’s Federal Court Appeal where the judgement was already pre-written a week before his appeal dates was supposed to end and then leaked as the prosecutors were still submitting.

Is this justice, truth and rule of law as you know it? Are you still “baffled”?

(Dennis, please let me know if you have any areas that you need proof or clarification)