A major foreign firm with massive operations in Malaysia is entangled in a horribly embarrassing civil action that relates to criminal charges that have been raised against an employee for alleged fraud and deception to gain contracts for that firm.

Sarawak Report has learnt that this is the background to the police report recently lodged by no one less than the Chief Justice herself, naming two prominent lawyers in Kuala Lumpur for being involved in ‘influence peddling’ in the legal system.

In short, the lawyers are accused of bragging (thanks to texts cited by the Chief Justice’s department) that they could rig the management of the case and therefore the judgement ‘right up the Chief Justice’ herself.

Naturally, the Chief Justice is scandalised and naturally the already existing doubts amongst Malaysians about the trustworthiness of their legal institutions will be further undermined.

This only goes to prove that exacting huge and vindictive fines against those who voice such doubts (as did one commentator on an article in Malaysiakini for which the paper itself was punished) is not the solution.

Action, such as that now taken by the new Chief Justice, and then proper punishment of those unworthy practitioners who seek to undermine the very law they serve is the only way to solve what has plainly become a persistent and corrosive cancer in the country.

Rogue practitioners

So, who are the ‘rogue’ practitioners in this case? Sarawak Report knows the names of the two lawyers cited in the police report and they will be known also to those who read the news media.

The reason for their apparent cockiness – one informed a representative of the foreign company that the other was so influential that he could rig the case in their favour – derives from their close connection to the political bosses of the moment. Of course.

In order to manage his own affairs and those of his unusual government through the back door, it is known that the present PM Mahiaddin collected a group of legal figures around him to drive through high profile cases, particularly the cases that spin large sums of money.

Prosecutions against foreign entities and settlements with major institutions on behalf of Malaysia (particularly relating to the lucrative matter of 1MDB) have thus been essentially privatised under PN. No longer are they conducted through the official AG’s chamber and managed together with civil servants, overseen by Parliament, but have instead been handed to this circle of private lawyers, known personally to the prime minister.

It has been a widening circle but certain of these individuals have apparently traded upon their connection and the perception that justice is not according to what is right, but is according to whom you know or who can pay. In short, it is a case of the person who can pay the person who can influence that wins the case.

Anyone who finds themself before a Malaysian court must therefore live with dread and concern unless and until this matter is sorted out. Strange and untoward rulings (of which there have been quite a number) will immediately find an explanation in their minds. As one senior practitioner voiced to Sarawak Report:

“Where is the Bar Council in all this? Shame on them that they have yet to speak out about this evidence of two black sheep in their midst. The whole legal profession must join to push for exposure and prosecution of this disgraceful case as a lesson to all”

As the Chief Justice well knows, this particular case cannot remain in the dark. There is a litigant who is the victim of this skullduggery apparently employed by a foreign company to influence a judgement in Malaysia.

According to the allegations cited in the police report, this company had advised the litigant to reach a resolution since they now had matters squared in their favour, thanks to assurances from their named politically connected lawyers.

Having reported such blackmail the litigant now has every right to speak out and to drag the matter into the ongoing court case against that company.

If this matter is not resolved fully and in the open: were the litigant to be ‘bought off’ and the Chief Justice to retreat on her allegations, for example, Malaysia would be condemned for the foreseeable future to a status of a bananas country unsafe to do business in, or even to pass through.

Exposure, rectification and the undoing of the past year of unprecedented graft and corruption is Malaysia’s only way out from the consequences of this backdoor administration imposed on the country by the decision to appoint a leader without a party as prime minister.