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| Ahmad Sarbani’s death: the lies and deceptions by the MACC (part 2) Posted: 06 Jun 2011 01:00 AM PDT The first thing that ASP Zuhairi did was to interview Ahmad Sarbani's colleagues and he discovered a totally different picture of this much-maligned dead man. ASP Zuhairi obtained witness statements that Ahmad Sarbani was a responsible and hardworking officer who was ever so helpful to everyone who dealt with the Export & Import Section of Port Klang Customs Dept. NO HOLDS BARREDRaja Petra Kamarudin Dato Seri Abu Kassim was the Deputy Chief Commissioner of the MACC when Teoh Beng Hock died in custody in 2009. When news first broke about what they are trying to mislead us and classify as 'suicide', the then Selangor MACC Director, Hishamudin Hashim, panicked and ran to Abu Kassim to get 'further instructions'. Teoh Beng Hock in happier times The Teoh Beng Hock Royal Commission of Inquiry (TBH RCI) has since found damning evidence of lies and manipulation of facts by the MACC to cover up what had transpired at that time -- including the revelation that MACC officers have the habit of watching pornography in the office. To divert public attention from this damning evidence, on 1st April 2011, Abu Kassim, who by now was the MACC Chief Commissioner, launched a nationwide blitz against the Royal Malaysian Customs Department (Jabatan Kastam) by sensationalising the 'news' that Customs officers had colluded with hundreds of freight forwarders to fleece the government of RM108 billion in tax revenues. Things went terribly wrong for the MACC when, on 6th April at about 11.00am, Customs Deputy Director Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed was found dead, thrown out of the third floor of the brand new MACC office building at Jalan Cochrane in Kuala Lumpur. Police officers removing Ahmad Sarbani's body from MACC's KL Office The MACC Director of Investigations, Datuk Mustafar Ali, gave an immediate press statement that evening that Ahmad Sarbani had come to the MACC office voluntarily and without an appointment. MACC Investigations Director Dato' Mutafar Ali justifying the Customs officer's death at the MACC office Malaysia Today has now received a report from 'Deep Throats' within the MACC as well as within the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) that Datuk Mustafar's statement was a lie and calculated to deny the fact that Ahmad Sarbani died in MACC's custody, just like what happened to Teoh Beng Hock. This is what Malaysia Today's Deep Throat in the MACC said: "The MACC's leadership cannot be trusted. They lied and tried to cover up Teoh Beng Hock's death. And now they are doing the same again in Ahmad Sarbani's death." The MACC needed something sensational that can overshadow its battered reputation in the TBH RCI. They lied to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak by saying that widespread corruption by the Royal Malaysian Customs had caused the government to suffer tax losses of RM108 billion. That got Najib excited. You see, Malaysia is going broke and Najib needed that revenue very badly and he thought that this was one way for the country to 'earn money'. The Selangor part of the investigation is coordinated by its Director, Yusof Akope, and his deputy, Mohd Fauzi. The Senior Investigating Officer (S.I.O.) for this case is Abdul Ghani. However, instead of conducting fair and unbiased investigations and telling the truth, these three concocted unverified intelligence to support the MACC HQ's plan to make the allegations of the loss of RM108 billion believable. They must have learned this from the CIA, which had fabricated false intelligence reports on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order to support President Bush's plan to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Now the whole world knows that Saddam never had any WMDs. But the end had justified the means -- Saddam has been hung dead. The Malaysian government-owned mainstream media was roped in to sensationalise the raids and arrests of 62 Customs officers in Penang, Johor, Selangor and Pahang by a special task force, which purportedly comprised the MACC, the Inland Revenue Board, Bank Negara and the Customs Department. The subsequent reaction of the Customs Department D-G, Dato' Mohamed Khalid Yusuf, who expressed shock and unhappiness over the exaggerated tax losses and the death is very telling. In fact, the top leadership of the Customs Department was actually in the dark over the MACC plans and did not know anything about what was going on -- contrary to what we were told. Customs D-G Dato' Khalid (centre) clarifying the MACC's erroneous allegations with FMM President Tan Sri Mustafa Mansur and FMM Customs Committee vice-chairman Datuk Tan Kwong Jin The targets did not require much intelligence to identify. Going by the theory that the revenue losses were from import and export activities, they simply zoomed in on the custom entry points and presumed that all the officers in these divisions were corrupted. That was how the MACC led these raids. There were no prior investigations. All the MACC had to work on are hunches. But they didn't care because the objective was to divert public attention from the TBH RCI. That was what the disbanded APCO Public Relations firm had taught them -- it is all about managing public perception. In the days that followed the sensational raids, the mainstream media kept playing up the story leaked by the MACC itself about one officer who purportedly had several million ringgit in his bank account while another had almost RM1 million. Two others were alleged to have more than RM500,000 each. Stories of the sweeping raids recovering gold bars and more than RM600,000 in cash stored in several bags were played up to the maximum. With such strong 'evidence', you would imagine that these officers would have been charged by now. It has been two months since the raids and arrests, yet not one officer has been charged! In the meantime, Yusof Akope, Mohd Fauzi and Abdul Ghani continued to smear the name of the dead Ahmad Sarbani as a very corrupted officer and painted him as the mastermind of the multi-billion ringgit Customs Department scam. They told the Police I.O., ASP Zuhairi Mohamed, that Ahmad Sarbani jumped off the MACC building and committed suicide because he was afraid that the MACC investigations would show the billions of cash that he had stashed away. They even dubbed the case as the 3B case (RM3 billion). See how fast it came down from RM108 billion to a mere RM3 billion! They also told ASP Zuhairi and DSP Shafie that Ahmad Sarbani had admitted that he received bribes from Ah Seng of Top Mark Freightforwarding and Wan Zainal Abidin of Schenker Logistics. The first thing that ASP Zuhairi did was to interview Ahmad Sarbani's colleagues and he discovered a totally different picture of this much-maligned dead man. ASP Zuhairi obtained witness statements that Ahmad Sarbani was a responsible and hardworking officer who was ever so helpful to everyone who dealt with the Export & Import Section of Port Klang Customs Department. ASP Zuhairi found out that stories of Ahmad Sarbani being stressed out were also untrue. On 4th April, during Zuhur prayers at the Customs surau in Port Klang, Ahmad Sarbani was seen hugging and consoling fellow officer Basharuddin who had just been released from MACC remand. According to Basharuddin, Ahmad Sarbani had told him to have faith in God and not to be afraid, as the truth will prevail. Apparently, Ahmad Sarbani was also an Imam Zuhur of that surau and was a pious Muslim. To ASP Zuhairi, all these are not consistent with the conduct of a stressed-out, corrupted officer who committed suicide. And tomorrow we shall continue this story with part 3, so stay tuned. Ahmad Sarbani's death: the lies and deceptions by the MACC (part 1)
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| Ahmad Sarbani’s death: the lies and deceptions by the MACC (part 1) Posted: 05 Jun 2011 07:11 PM PDT And so it is with regards to the MACC. Those in the Royal Malaysian Customs Department have no one to turn to. They don't trust the PDRM. They don't trust the MACC. But they trust Malaysia Today. So they have asked Malaysia Today to let truth be told. And that is what we are going to do. NO HOLDS BARREDRaja Petra Kamarudin We from the civil society movements are extremely unhappy about the rampant corruption in Malaysia that threatens to reduce the country to the status of a failed state. But what can we do about it other than lament and reveal what we know? Not that anything is going to be done about what we reveal. Hey, we even revealed that the Attorney-General is bonking one of his Directors. And know what? Not only has nothing been done about it but he is still bonking her until today in spite of everyone knowing about it. "So why bother?" many may ask. Well, our job is just to reveal the truth whether anything is done about it or not. We even reveal the misconduct of the opposition although we get vilified and are called traitors and are accused of being bought off. It is what we do -- never mind how unpopular that makes us. And if you don't like it, tough! That's your problem, not mine. Talking about corruption, I still remember back in the 1980s when I spoke to the Deputy IGP, Tun Haniff Omar's number two, about corruption in the police force and he said that if they want to eradicate corruption they would have to sack 97% of the police force. I did not ask Tan Sri Amin whether he is in the 3% or the 97%. I also remember back in the 1990s when the Director of ACA Terengganu named Zainal launched corruption investigations against senior government officers and Umno leaders. It appeared like 100% of these people, Menteri Besar Wan Mokhtar Ahmad included, were going to be sent to jail. Wan Mokhtar called Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Zainal was transferred within 24 hours. So, yes, there are some good and dedicated Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA, now called MACC) officers. But then if they were to do the job they have been entrusted to do they would suffer persecution, 24-hour transfers, sent into 'cold storage' and whatnot. So it is not worth doing your job. Better, as one Member of Parliament said: you 'close one eye'. Closing two eyes plus your mouth and ears as well may be even better. Then you would go far. So whom do people turn to when they are unhappy and distrust the very institutions that are supposed to be the trustees of the public? To the police? Pleeeeeez! To the MACC? What? And get thrown out of the window? Luckily lawyer Rosli Dahlan was detained overnight in the MACC lockup in Putrajaya, which is underground. If not he would have also been found dead on the ground floor. Can you imagine the newspaper headlines the next day if Rosli had died? "Lawyer Rosli Dahlan was found dead on the ground floor of the MACC headquarters in Putrajaya. Rosli was suspected to have jumped out of MACC's underground lockup and landed on the ground floor." Yes, as in the movie 'Ghost Buster', whom do you call? The Police? MACC? No, you call the Ghost Busters! You contact Malaysia Today. You come to Malaysia Today to ask that the truth be told. And so it is with regards to the MACC. Those in the Royal Malaysian Customs Department have no one to turn to. They don't trust the PDRM. They don't trust the MACC. But they trust Malaysia Today. So they have asked Malaysia Today to let truth be told. And that is what we are going to do. So stay tuned and tomorrow we shall tell you part two of the story "Ahmad Sarbani's death: the lies and deceptions by the MACC", a story that will shock you. Just when you thought it is safe to go into the water, as they said in the movie 'Jaws'. That's right, there are many sharks in Malaysia. But not all sharks swim in the water. Many sharks walk on two feet. And many sharks wear uniforms. And many sharks are under the protection of Umno. In fact, many of these sharks are actually instruments of those who walk in the corridors of power. They are instruments to take down those critical of the government. They are tools used to silence dissent. And what worries those who walk in the corridors of power is that many who work for the government no longer trust the government but trust Malaysia Today more. And that is why they come to Malaysia Today to tell their story. And this is why they want Malaysia Today to reveal what they told us. Now, hold on for part two where we reveal what our Deep Throat in the Customs Department told us. |
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