Pascal Najadi is an angry man. Two years after his father, Hussain Ahmad Najadi, the Arab-Malaysian Development Bank founder, was shot dead in broad daylight in the centre of Kuala Lumpur, the case remains open as the main suspect is still at large.
The 47-year-old, who is also a banker, said he was upset with both the Malaysian police and Interpol for not doing enough in tracking down the suspected mastermind in the case.
Speaking to The Malaysian Insider from Moscow, Russia, recently, Pascal, who is the founder and president of international private Swiss merchant banking advisory firm, Najadi & Partners Ltd, said the thought of Malaysia now only brought him intense grief and dismay.
This, he said, was because until today, he has been kept in the dark on the progress of the murder investigations, as well as the whereabouts of the suspected mastermind who had allegedly hired a gunman to kill his father.
Najadi, 75, was gunned down in July 2013 at a parking lot in front of a Chinese temple in Kuala Lumpur. His wife Cheong Mei Kuen, 51, was also shot but escaped with injuries to the hand and thigh. The couple were walking towards their car at Lorong Ceylon when a gunman approached them and fired several shots.
“There was no information from either Interpol or the Malaysian police.
"To say the least, the performance and operating procedure of the Malaysian police and Interpol are far below standard.
"Until now, I still have not been contacted on what they are doing, if at all.
"I would like to know why the authorities failed to update us – the victim’s family – on the development of the case, including the cross-border movements of the main suspect.”
Pascal said since the day of the murder, the Malaysian police had only contacted him once.
“That was it. One phone call and there was no further communication after that,” said Pascal.
“Since 2013, there has been zero communication, which throws up serious question. Why? Is there something Malaysia is trying to hide?”
Pascal asked how the Malaysian police could have allowed the suspected mastermind in a murder case to flee the country undetected, to Australia and later to China.
“If a criminal is allowed to cross borders undetected or unmonitored, the question now is, who is his next target?”
Federal police Criminal Investigation Department director Datuk Mohmad Salleh, who was then the Kuala Lumpur police chief, had told the media in October 2013, three months after the murder, that the main suspect, Lim Yuen Soo, 54, failed to surrender after given a week to do so.
He said police had alerted Interpol to track him down in Australia. The suspect was reported to have fled three days after Najadi was shot dead
Pascal Najadi
One month later, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters that the suspect had fled to China and had listed him in Interpol's red notice as a wanted person by the Malaysian authorities.
There were no updates on the case after that.
Pascal said he conducted his own “investigation” and with the help of security advisers from Russia and the European Union, had determined that the suspect had boarded a scheduled flight from Australia to Shanghai, China. The suspects' tracks, he added, ended there.
He urged the authorities to put in more effort to find the culprit and bring closure to the case.
He said police should also update the family from time to time on the progress of the case.
“We have to rely on them, the law enforcement agencies to do their job. It is their job (to find the culprit), not ours,” said Pascal.
He added that there were so many questions left unanswered, one of which was the Malaysian's police failure to alert their Australian counterpart early.
"Why didn't the Malaysian police advise the AFP (Australian Federal Police) early once they knew that the suspect had fled with a Malaysian biometric passport to Australia? That is a huge unanswered question there.”
He also said there appeared to be a total lack of coordination between the authorities, between the respective Interpol stations, Lyon, Kuala Lumpur and Canberra.
To date, two people, the gunman and a taxi driver have been charged in connection with the murder.
The taxi driver, Chew Siang Chee was charged with possession of a pistol and bullets found in a letter box at B-15-2, Kondominium Desa Cindaimas, Jalan Sekutu, Off Jalan Kuchai Lama, Brickfields a month after the murder.
He was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years' jail and six strokes of the rotan for possession of the pistol and another four years for possession of the bullets, to be served consecutively from the day of his arrest on July 30, 2013.
The hitman, car repossessor Koong Swee Kwan, 45, was charged last year with Najadi's murder.
Koong, also known as "Four Eyes", was on the run for about two months and was nabbed at a house in Taman Larut Tin, near the small town of Pokok Assam in Taiping, Perak.
He was also charged with attempting to murder Najadi's wife Cheong, at the same place and time.
On September 5, 2014, the High Court sentenced Koong to death for the murder. He was also sentenced to 18 years’ jail for attempting to murder Cheong.
As for the motive, rumours were rife that it was over a property deal that had gone sour, involving the Chinese temple where Najadi had visited prior to his murder. Police have yet to confirm this.
“I do not know. The mastermind is still out there.
"We (the family) have checked all possibilities. My father was not involved in any deals involving the temple, and if he was, it was in his personal capacity and he was not standing in the way of the negotiations.
"To the best of our knowledge, my father was not intending to antagonise any of the parties involved. Had my father known he posed a problem or complications, he would have stepped away.”
He described his father’s execution in broad daylight as extremely brutal and wondered about security in Malaysia.
“It is not simply a matter of my father’s death.
"If an innocent civilian can be murdered in broad daylight in a country that supposedly prides itself on stability and lack of armed conflict, it begs the question of the safety of other citizens or visitors whose loved ones have neither the resources nor the access to search for answers,” said Pascal.
Meanwhile, police sources close to the investigation told The Malaysian Insider that since the arrest of the gunman was made only after a few months, it took police a while to establish the connection between him and the suspected mastermind.
He said the investigations proceeded from there, which then led police to believe that the main suspect was already in Australia.
The AmBank Group was founded in 1975 as Arab-Malaysian Development Bank by Najadi via his holding company AIAK (Arab Investments for Asia Kuwait).
He took the bank public via the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) in 1981. – Malay Mail
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