YOURSAY | ‘So why would DOJ want to waste their time to seek assistance from you?’

Apandi claims DOJ action is 'politically motivated'

Kim Quek: Attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali, the whole world knows that you are the reason why PM Najib Razak has not been caught up by the law over the 1MDB scandal, that you have stuck out your neck to allegedly shield him from prosecution despite compelling criminal evidence.

And now, you are discrediting the US Department of Justice (DOJ) suits on 1MDB for not having first consulted you. Who do you think you are kidding - our gullible rural folks?

Frankly, Apandi, your childish and apparently immoral conduct is outright disgusting, considering the pre-eminent constitutional position you are holding as the chief legal adviser and prosecutor of the country.

Odin Tajué: Apandi, the people in DOJ are not illiterate, ignorant hillbillies from some hick’s town with a population of 100 in the middle of nowhere in the US. They are intelligent, well-educated, well-informed city slickers.

Therefore, they must be aware of your action and omission pertaining to the 1MDB issue. They must be aware that you were uncooperative with regard to the requests (two in numbers) from the Swiss Attorney-General’s Office. That being the case, why would they want to waste their time to seek any assistance from you?

If the DOJ’s action is politically motivated, then you have a very simple solution; it is, get Najib to speak to US President Donald Trump. After all, did he not claim that Trump had said that he was his (Trump’s) favourite prime minister? - besides being his golf buddy, of course.

Did he not boast about playing golf with Trump and that not many of the world’s prime ministers get the chance to play golf with any US president or something to that effect?

Or dispatch a delegation to Washington to protest and present unassailable evidence to prove the DOJ has committed a grievous error? Easier still, summon the US ambassador to Malaysia and do the same?

You clearly care not about what is more important in this issue, and that is, vast sums of money have been allegedly stolen from Malaysians through 1MDB and to bring the alleged culprits to book.

There is no question of speculation here. The auditor-general has discovered that some US$7 billion from 1MDB is unaccounted for, but his report has been classified under the Official Secrets Act (OSA). Why should that be if not to hide the ugly truth and the identity(ies) of the culprit(s)?

It is plainer than daylight that US$3.5 billion was allegedly stolen from Malaysians when that money was paid to Aabar Investment PJS Ltd.

If that company is indeed owned by International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) as Finance Minister II Johari Abdul Ghani has claimed, why does the sum have to be paid to IPIC again? Why are you not interested to deal with this obvious transgression?

Apandi, your salary is paid by Malaysian taxpayers. You are duty bound to act to safeguard the interest of these people and not that of Malaysian Official 1 (MO1) and his wife.

You have failed miserably in your duty. Anyone with even an iota of honour or self-worth in your place would be ashamed of himself and would have resigned his position.

You have no shame and are still occupying your position. You are a man of zero honour, nihil integrity, zilch principle, and nada morals.

Ipohcrite: "If they request (any information pertaining to 1MDB), we are obliged to assist,” said Apandi.

The AG said the same thing when it was reported that the Swiss AG would seek Malaysia's help in the 1MDB probe but he later rejected the Swiss AG's request when it was made and absolutely refused to provide any form of assistance to them.

I don't know how the public would view his character after all that, but he is still holding a position that demands integrity. As a Malaysian, I have mixed feelings of embarrassment and outrage, all because of our AG.

Trueglitter: The audacity of Apandi to allegedly protect the much-embattled MO1 from those sources of condemnations and insinuations on the latter's guilt has inevitably taken on preposterous and unimaginable momentum.

Never in the history of our nation had a prime minister been so horrendously and relentlessly subjected to such a degrading level of abandonment and vitriolic condemnation from a fiery and unforgiving populace.

The unprecedented debacle has no doubt been further exacerbated and fuelled by the deafening silence from the cornered Najib who is seemingly under siege and whose sole course of a paltry defence was via unsubstantiated and evasive denials.

Clearly, the opportunistic and antagonistic Apandi needs to be seriously reminded of the wisdom of adage that "the harder one squeezes on a handful of sand, the faster it will escape between the fingers", hence his unsubstantiated and ridiculous rebuttals cum denials would only serve to confirm Najib's guilt on DOJ claims.

Anonymous 2436471476414726: DOJ's action is politically motivated? Apandi, it is hard to believe that you made such a ridiculous assumption. You are supposed to belong to the legal fraternity but when you make those statements, you sound like a typical Umno lackey.

You simply lack class and are an embarrassment to the legal profession. Give us reasons why DOJ and those other authorities in Singapore, Switzerland and Luxembourg would want to topple the BN government.

We believe those countries brought the cases to court only after a thorough investigation and armed with concrete and irrefutable evidence, backed by witness statements. You make yourself a laughing stock when you as the AG come up with those stupid statements.

Mushiro: If it was true that the DOJ civil forfeiture suit in relation to 1MDB is "politically motivated", then Najib should cut ties with the US.

Why work with a country that is trying to bring down a "genuinely elected government"? Apandi should suggest this to Najib.

Negarawan: As a MO1 appointee, Apandi's position on 1MDB is self-explanatory. However, his continued baseless attacks on the DOJ and the Swiss AG is making himself into an international pariah and a subject of odium in legal circles.

On one hand, he says that he is "obliged to assist" any request for legal assistance, but on the other hand he has repeatedly refused appeals from Swiss authorities for help in gathering evidence.

Switzerland had twice asked Malaysia for mutual legal assistance, according to Michael Lauber, the Swiss AG. This indicates that Apandi himself is politically motivated to allegedly protect a certain individual, rather than protecting the interest of the Malaysian people.

Otherwise, instead of attacking the DOJ, he would be collaborating with them to repatriate the assets allegedly stolen by the culprits behind 1MDB.

Malaysia desperately needs an AG like Rodrigo Janot, who has the integrity and courage to charge Brazilian President Michel Temer with taking multimillion-dollar bribes.

The US and EU governments need to send a strong message to Malaysia to buck up and be a part of the international effort against corruption and money laundering.

The conduct of the AG is certainly appalling and unacceptable by international standards. His distortion of facts surrounding the "Arab donation" which was allegedly banked into MO1's personal accounts has been embarrassingly highlighted in the DOJ's lawsuit.

Léon Moch: Should we care where the information comes from? We should be more concerned about the quality of information. If a bunch of Malaysians possesses real information about major crimes, then it is their duty to report it.

The question is whether the DOJ would act on information without first conducting some kind of investigation. If they have done so and believed the information to be credible enough to file an action in court, not once but multiple times, then we should take heed and not question where the information came from.

Hamzah Paiman: What action can the citizens take if the AG fails in his duty to safeguard the interest of the people and start playing politics? This is the question that everyone should ask.

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