COMMENT | How much would Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak have to earn before he can truly afford to allegedly transfer RM9.5 million to senior lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah?

If the figures provided by Paywizard.org is anything to be believed, the man only earns RM240,000 per annum. How then could Najib afford to allegedly pay Shafee RM9.5 million?

This simply does not add up as Najib has been prime minister for only eight years. His income would be RM2.88 million at the most!

Therefore, however Tourism and Culture Minister Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz tried to explain away the controversy, it is hard for anyone to believe that the money had come from Najib’s salary.

The government had claimed that Shafee was paid a mere RM1,000 for his role as senior prosecutor in the Sodomy II case, but why then did such a huge sum of money allegedly went to Shafee?

If the allegation is true, then, perhaps we want to know if Shafee had paid income tax for the RM9.5 million transferred into his account.

If Shafee failed to declare his income, it is time for the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) to investigate his case to determine the amount of taxes that he had to pay. At 28 percent, it works out to RM2.66 million.

The alleged transfer of such a huge sum of money is something suspicious for the ordinary citizen who follows the story closely.

Why should Najib allegedly transfer such a huge amount of money to a private prosecutor? Why did Najib not use public prosecutors instead when Abdul Ghani Patail was then the attorney-general?...