Rosli Dahlan – Verdict by the Court of Public Opinion

Rosli Dahlan – Verdict by the Court of Public Opinion

by Din Merican

On Monday December 20, Lawyer Rosli Dahlan will be in the dock of the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court to be adjudged whether he is guilty or innocent of the charge brought against him by A-G Gani Patail using the MACC. That will be the verdict by a court of law.

I have attended Rosli Dahlan’s trial from Day 1 until it ended. I know the charge, I know the facts, I have seen the MACC witnesses in action giving evidence ,and I have heard the MACC DPPs delivering their submissions. I will now pronounce this verdict by the court of public opinion.

The Accused

The accused, Rosli Dahlan, was from the 1^st Batch of the law graduates of the International Islamic University (IIU). He read law and was personally tutored by the much respected and admired late Professor Emeritus Tan Sri Ahmad Ibrahim. He was taught Islamic ethics by the Distinguished Professor Tan Sri Kamal Hassan. He is thus imbued with a strong sense of respect for the Rule of Law and Islamic ethics of Amr Ma’ruf Nahy Munkar (Enjoin Good Forbid Evil). He believes in truth and justice and Ukhuwah Islamiyah (Islamic Brotherhood or camaraderie).

He is married with three children and has strong family values. He is active in the neighbourhood mosques activities and orphanage foundations which he provides legal advice and assists in fund raising.

He runs a highly successful private law practice beginning with a very old distinguished firm called Allen & Gledhill which then merged to be a much more successful bigger firm known as Lee Hishammuddin Allen & Gledhill which is regarded as one of the premier firms in Malaysia.

Lawyer Rosli is known to be a highly disciplined professional acting without fear or favour. Prior to this charge, he has never been cited for any disciplinary misconduct or for any offence. He is a senior member of the Bar and is well regarded by his peers and adversaries alike. Until this incident, he was viewed by the banks as someone of good credit standing.

The Accuser

The accuser is Senior DPP cum Assistant Director of Legal & Prosecution MACC, Anthony Kevin Morais. He prefers to use his second name as his first and thus he is called Kevin rather than Anthony. Kevin regards himself as learned in the law with wide powers conferred on him by the MACC Act and its predecessor legislations. Kevin does not like to be questioned as to his decision making, a trait passed down from the At-G General Gani Patail himself. The philosophy of power that this higher echelon of the A-G’s Chambers subscribe to is that “We command, you abide”.

Kevin Morais is a dapper dresser and is very well groomed, putting to shame some of the lady DPPs.

He looks rather youthful for his age. He is a dapper dresser and is very well groomed, putting to shame some of the shabby looking lady DPPs. He powders his face, puts on mascara, rouge and lip gloss when he is in court with well manicured finger nails. With such attention to personal vanity, he looks even more attractive outside of office hours.

Kevin’s sexual orientation is unknown although Malaysia Today’s report out of London suggests that he has an older English boyfriend whom he spent time with last Christmas. He is unmarried, and it is doubtful if he ever will, at least not in Malaysia. As such, there is nothing to be said of his family values.

Although born a Catholic, his present lifestyle would invite ex-communication by the Pope in the Vatican. Because of the predominant number of Malays in the Legal and Judicial Service, his flair of the English language places him amongst the more competent government lawyers. Thus he interprets the law as he wants to, and not as how it should be.

Mr "Irrelevant" is now in eternal repose

Kevin hopes to be a Judge one day to fill in the vacuum left by another Indian Judge with an English sounding name, Justice Augustine Paul, whose eminence was in ruling every piece of defence evidence in Anwar Ibrahim’s Sodomy I as “Irrelevant”. Consequently, the Good Lord rendered him irrelevant by recalling him to permanent abode six feet underground.

The Background Facts

Life was all sunshine and rosy for Rosli Dahlan – he had a good happy family, his firm had expanded, his practice was flourishing. Nothing, it seemed, could have gone wrong, that was until Rosli decided to defend his friend, the former Director of Commercial Crimes Investigations Dept (CCID), Commissioner of Police Dato’ Ramli Yusuff. Since 2006, Ramli was targeted to be eliminated from PDRM by former IGP Musa Hassan and by A-G Gani Patail.

Musa Hassan had to eliminate Ramli because Ramli had discovered his links with the BK Tan syndicate which was about to nationalise and corporatize the illegal money-lending Along syndicates. Gani Patail wanted to eliminate Ramli because Ramli had recommended that the former MAS Chairman, Tan Sri Tajuddin Ramli, should be charged for various offences, whereas Gani Patail had already cut a deal with Tajuddin’s proxy – Shahidan Shafie.

Musa Hassan had to eliminate Ramli because Ramli had discovered his links with the BK Tan syndicate

Before Dato’ Ramli became the Director of CCID, Shahidan had also cut a deal with the former Deputy Director of CCID, Deputy Commissioner Dato’ Nawawi Ismail. That explained why Nawawi immediately became a partner in Shahidan’s law firm upon his retirement.

Shahidan aka Mr. Fix It is an old hand at this. He was charged in 1990 for bribery when he was the OC Secret Societies Johor. So he knew how to fix everything after he left the Police Force. Shahidan had just about everyone in the Police and the A-G Chambers in his pocket so that they would not take action against Tajuddin Ramli.

Gani Patail had already cut a deal with Tajuddin’s proxy – Shahidan Shafie. Shahidan will never realize why he lost his son." Enough " never existed in his lexicon. Reading between the lines -- the wealth plundered in his evil schemes gave his son an expensive SUV maybe that ended his life at a tender age. Greed got the better of Shahidan!!!

Shahidan takes care of his wards very well. So well that when AG Gani Patail wanted to go for Haj, Shahidan arranged for everything and even shared room with A-G Gani’s son, who is also a government lawyer with the A-G Chambers. They have even prepared the line of succession to protect them when they retire. Thus, Dato’ Ramli’s entry into CCID was about to jeopardise all these arrangements. So, the decision was made that Dato’ Ramli must be taken out.

Musa Hassan then caused the arrest of an Ipoh criminal known as Moo Sai Chin and kept him in detention under the Emergency Ordinance to get him to fabricate stories about Ramli. When Moo was ready to co-operate, Musa partially released him under the Restricted Residence Act until he agreed to sign a statement with the MACC in 2007 implicating Ramli for bribery of RM25,000/- which was supposed to have happened in 1999, some 8 years before that!

Musa Hassan then caused the arrest of an Ipoh criminal known as Moo Sai Chin and kept him in detention under the Emergency Ordinance to get him to fabricate stories about Ramli.

That gave A-G Gani the reason to direct Kevin Morais to conduct illegal searches on the asset of Dato’ Ramli. When these searches showed nothing incriminating, Kevin issued a Notice to declare assets against Dato’ Ramli. Kevin did not realise that prior to his Notice, Dato’ Ramli had made 37 departmental asset declarations.

News of this investigation was leaked to the press in order to discredit Dato’ Ramli who was about to make disclosure about the crimes of Musa Hassan and Gani Patail. In collusion with the mainstreammedia, they spun the story of the “RM27 Million Cop” which made headlines for many months in 2007.

Disturbed by these attacks, Dato’ Ramli engaged Rosli who, in turn, engaged a team of accountants to prepare the list of assets. Rosli then filed a complete list for Ramli which ran into volumes (in boxes) of documents. Again this complete audit showed nothing incriminating.

Infuriated that his plan to entrap Dato’ Ramli had failed, A-G Gani directed Kevin to issue a similar Notice against Rosli. Now this was where things went wrong. Rosli was not a suspect in any offence. So Kevin could not issue a Notice to Rosli as a “suspect”. Rosli was also not Dato’ Ramli’s family member, so Kevin could not issue a Notice to Rosli as a “relative”.

In his haste to fix Rosli, Kevin decided to classify Rosli as an “associate” of Dato’ Ramli. But there was a definition of “associate” in the ACA Act and none of it applied to Rosli. But Kevin didn’t care. He will interpret the law as he wants to!

So, Kevin issued a Notice against Rosli as an “associate” of Dato’ Ramli not expecting Rosli to point out Kevin’s mistakes in interpreting the law. And that was exactly what Rosli did in several letters that Rosli wrote to Kevin. Kevin was so arrogant. He refused to answer Rosli’s letters. He did not want the MACC to interview nor seek clarification from Rosli. He was just boiling mad that Rosli dared to point out his mistakes. After all, Kevin was more superior.

Rosli is neither an “associate” or relative of Dato’ Ramli ! Kevin directed the MACC to arrest Rosli at all cost on the eve of Hari Raya of 2007. Rosli was brutalised, kept one night in the MACC cell and dragged to court the next day, handcuffed !

Encouraged by an infuriated A-G Gani Patail, Kevin decided to teach Rosli a lesson. So, Kevin directed the MACC to arrest Rosli at all cost on the eve of Hari Raya of 2007. Rosli was brutalised, kept one night in the MACC cell and dragged to court as the lawyer who had hidden Dato’ Ramli’s RM27 million assets. That was what they wanted the public to believe, and that was what the mainstream media reported – that Rosli was Dato’ Ramli’s nominee.

But there was a problem to make a charge that Rosli hid Dato’Ramli’s assets because Dato’ Ramli has not yet been charged nor arrested. How do you charge an “associate” when the principal suspect has not yet been fully investigated, arrested nor charged?

So, the charge against Rosli had to state something totally different than what the public was told. Now let’s see the Charge.

The Charge

The Charge against Rosli was that he disobeyed Kevin’s command contained in a Notice issued to an “associate” under s. 32(1)(b) of the Antic Corruption Act to declare assets which he holds for Dato’ Ramli Yusuff.

There was no mention which of Dato’ Ramli’s assets was being held by Rosli. There was no mention of any RM27million. There was no mention that Rosli was a nominee. There was no mention which category of “associate” Rosli belonged to. There was no mention of all of the above because this was a fixed up charge! This fixed up charge would be an embarrassment to the MACC and to Kevin Morais during the trial.

The Trial

The moment Rosli was charged, the MACC knew they had a problem. They had charged Rosli even before Dato’ Ramli was charged. They refused to tell the court who would be their witnesses because at that time they didn’t have an idea how to proceed. Thus, they had to juggle which witness could come first and who would do the least damage to their case. But the problems got bigger as they plodded on. Problems mushroomed one after another when the MACC witnesses started to contradict their own individual witness’ testimonies and then they each contradicted the other.

Under cross examination by the combative Dato’ Kumaraendran, it was shown that these witnesses were lying under oath, the biggest liar of them all was none other than Kevin Morais himself.

The first MACC witness, Senior Superintendent Azmi Ismail, sensing danger, openly admitted that Rosli was never a suspect for any offence but he was merely a witness. He also admitted that he had no knowledge of the offence allegedly committed by Dato’ Ramli and was just following instructions to prepare his “cover report” based on earlier cover reports. Thus, discovery was made that there were four cover reports, and yet none mentioned Dato Ramli’s name!

The situation became so bad that they had to look for every opportunity to postpone the trial. When Dato’ Kumaraendran caught Kevin lying countless times, Kevin decided he had had enough and asked for a long Christmas break to seek solace from his English boyfriend in London. When DPP Zulqarnain could not cover up any more for Kevin, they sought adjournments on the flimsiest reasons. This arrogant DPP even tried to intimidate the MACC’s own witness, Adenan Ismail, a former magistrate, when Adenan confirmed that it was his firm and not Rosli’s firm which handled the property transactions. This showed that Kevin Morais had committed an outright lie when Kevin insisted that Rosli’s firm handled the transaction. The lies by Kevin were so numerous that it was just pathetic to see him being caught by Dato’ Kumaraendran at every corner.

Exasperated, DPP Dzulqarnain decided to delay Rosli’s trial to allow Dato’ Ramli’s trial to proceed in the hope that Dato’ Ramli’s trial would turn up some favourable points for them. Unfortunately for the MACC, Dato’ Seri Shafee Abdullah who represented Dato’ Ramli was doing a brilliant job in showing that all the three cases against Dato’ Ramli was a big fixed up job by former IGP Musa Hassan and A-G Gani Patail. In the end, Judge Supang Lian of Kota Kinabalu called Musa Hassan “an incredible witness whose evidence is not to be believed” which is the legal jargon for calling Musa Hassan a LIAR. This was followed by Judge Gunalen in Kuala Lumpur who also dismissed all the charges against Dato Ramli without calling for his defence. Dato’ Ramli had therefore been fully vindicated.

Musa Hassan “an incredible witness whose evidence is not to be believed”

This posed a new problem for Kevin and the MACC. What do they do with Rosli’s case? The easiest thing to do was to withdraw. But they can’t because Rosli has sued the MACC, Kevin and others for conspiracy and claimed RM50 million. They are in a catch 22 situation.Then, as if by coincidence, Judge Abu Bakar Katar was transferred out of Kuala Lumpur to Malacca. The MACC pounced on that to exclude Judge Abu Bakar Katar and wanted the new Judge to take over. But Judge Abu Bakar insisted that he will stay on to deliver his Judgment on Rosli.

Judgment Day

Based on the above, the Court of Public Opinion pronounce that the MACC’s case against Rosli Dahlan is totally baseless. This case is based on a fixed up charge stemming from an illegal and invalid Notice issued by an irresponsible DPP Anthony Kevin Morais. Rosli Dahlan is hereby acquitted and discharged without his defence being called.

The Court of Public Opinion further pronounce that Rosli Dahlan has been a victim of conspiracy by those in power and the mainstream media who have inflicted pain and suffering on him and his family. It is a sad day when a man of honour is publicly disgraced by men of dishonour.

The Court of Public Opinion prays that this should never happen again and that could only be if we, the Public, are vigilant against abuses by those vested with power and authority over us. The Court of Public Opinion hopes that the Court of Law would concur with these findings on Monday, December 20, 2010.