‘Prove your innocence, Kamal’

A company owned by the Johor sultanate wants a renegade lawyer to come back if he wants to clear his name of CBT.

KUALA LUMPUR: A Johor royalty-owned company has advised its former director accused of criminal breach of trust (CBT) to return to Malaysia and clear his name if he is innocent.

Southern Ads Sdn Bhd wanted lawyer Kamal Hisham Jaafar to answer for an alleged embezzlement of more than RM660,000 of the company’s money.

Speaking on behalf of the company, lawyer Baljit Singh Sidhu said that Kamal left the country for Dubai, UAE, in April 2011, after police reports were lodged against him.

This, he added, was after Southern Ads conducted an independent financial audit in March last year.

“The company discovered that there was a criminal element with his running of the company, namely… cheating, breach of trust and fraud.”

“Once a report was lodged, he was no longer in Johor Baru. He was alleged to have been in Dubai,” he told reporters at the Shangri-La Hotel.

Baljit found it strange that Kamal had supposedly left the country after police reports had been lodged against him.

He added that Kamal’s law firm, Kamal Hisham & Associates, was not the only one of Southern Ads’ stakeholders, but that it had also been “doing work” for the latter.

Kamal had been a Southern Ads director since the company was formed in 2004.

However, Baljit claimed that attempts to reach Kamal by the police here had been in vain.

This, he said, was despite two police-issued notices requesting for his presence sent to his family.

Baljit had been referring to a press conference called by Kamal’s legal counsel earlier this month.

According to a The Star report, Kamal was supposedly running a “consultancy firm” in Dubai since April last year, after travelling there via Singapore.

Kamal was allegedly fearful of returning to the country as the Immigration Department here did not appear to have any record of him going to Dubai.

The report added that the police had asked for Interpol help to locate Kamal.

Baljit added that Kamal also feared coming back because the police wanted to speak to him. This, he added, did not make sense.

“Just because of that issue, you say your security has been jeopardised? That doesn’t make sense!”

“Nobody forced you to leave the country… You left the country on your own will,” he said.

Baljit added that six police reports had been lodged by Southern Ads gainst Kamal to date.

Denying that Southern Ads had threatened Kamal in any way, he said that all the company had wanted at this point was justice.