COMMENT | When a former attorney-general offers a deal for exonerating a person responsible for billions of dollars of theft from Malaysian state company 1MDB for a paltry sum and the current attorney-general actually negotiates with this person, it raises serious questions.

It is good that the current AG rejected all of Jho Low’s offers, but should he have initiated discussions in the first place? And should a former AG have even taken this to the table?

Doesn’t the former AG have at least a moral obligation to report this to the police so as to help them get some idea of where this criminal, wanted by Interpol for offences in Malaysia and elsewhere amounting to billions of ringgit, might be located and arrested?

The answers to the first two questions have to be a resounding “no” and a booming “yes” to the third.

Given the amount of trouble 1MDB has caused Malaysia financially and politically, with damage and debate still reverberating across the nation, it raises the question of why something like this will take place in the first place and as recently as May this year.

Especially when the former AG was appointed by a then prime minister who has already been convicted of criminal offences in relation to 1MDB and is facing many other charges related to money laundering, influence peddling and corruption.

Jho Low is no ordinary thief but even an ordinary thief does not get to erase his crimes by offering to return only a small portion of what he stole. Returning the money is only an issue for mitigation when it comes to punishment, not forgiveness of the crime. There is no question of negotiation...