NAJIB'S ALTANTUYA LOGIC IN EXPLAINING RM2.6BIL FOUND IN HIS A/CS

The Attorney General and Najib’s Defense

It couldn’t be clearer than day and Azalina Othman has herself said so repeatedly: The Attorney General serves the government — ‘the AG advised us this, advised us that’ — even though popular perception has always been otherwise. If this is the case, if any outcome will come to naught, why then bother with the MACC investigations? Why, in spite of numerous other opportunities the past six months, had Najib Razak bothered to make a defense on television on Dec 7?

Jebat at JMD was perceptive enough to see that Najib’s initial defense over the 2.6 bn was one of denial. But not anymore. On the contrary, the central bank knew beforehand about the money, and that it was coming in, and that into Najib Razak’s bank account. Jebat:

What is perplexing is the fact that back in July 2015 when the news about that RM2.6 billion was exposed, he [Najib] and his whole army of sycophants denied ever having any sort of accounts!

Najib on Dec 7:

There is no intention at all to cheat or to commit an offence because Bank Negara had been notified about the existence of this account.

Jebat considered this contradiction as another Najib blunder. Jebat was wrong. No, it was not a blunder; it was a correction because in the present circumstances, painted to a corner, how would you, say, if you are Najib, extract yourself from it?

This is to say that correction has to have a purpose which, in Najib’s defense, appears intended to mitigate against the cloud of suspicion about him corruptly receiving the money. In other words, the defense is to offer a coherent and convincing explanation into the merits of the 2.6 bn.

But, even this is not an entirely satisfactory explanation. If indeed the money is clean, the investigations, unless fixed, would show it. Conversely, and with the AG on the side of the government, prosecution won’t happen even if the money is dirty.

Then there is the quality in the defense: to say that Bank Negara had been notified beforehand about the bank account say nothing about whether there has or there hasn’t been a corrupt act. That is, the shit stench in the trail of money lingers in the air: From who had the money come? Why? Where to? What for? (For the moment, put aside the SRC 42 million which appears more problematic, but that’s another story.)

On the other hand, if central bank notification is so important as a part of Najib’s eventual defense, then it raises two possibilities:

Najib is actually rehearsing a possible scenario in which the AG has to rule on whether or not there is a case against him. And, for that to happen,

Najib is correcting the errors, that is, the self-incriminating blunders made by himself and by those who spoke in the past on his behalf, Zahid Hamidi in particular. This is pertinent to MACC’s investigation and its outcome.

In his TV defense, therefore, Najib wasn’t only just addressing the nation or an imminent Umno general assembly. He was actually speaking to the Law. And this speech is made amid a set of circumstances vastly different from those in July 2015. Then, investigations into both affairs, 1MDB and 2.6 bn, came from four sides (MACC, AG Chambers, Bank Negara and Police). It is now down to one, MACC only (ignoring the PAC or the Auditor General).

How are circumstances different? For that we have events of the past ten days to help us understand Najib’s revelation on TV. Before that though let’s return briefly to AG Mohamed Apandi Ali.

He had an advice for Najib Razak, a fact tucked away, inadvertently by the looks of it, in a New Straits Times report. The advice was plainly this: Get it over quickly. The AG’s argument to Najib might run something like this (hints of which appeared here): The MACC investigation is a given and won’t go away. Najib sits on it, the investigation will go nowhere. It is stalled, true, but there is no closure, the file remains opened, and the political costs to Najib might head off towards, at best, an uncertainty, and 1MDB and 2.6 bn will still be used against him.

After which, there is a sudden flush of activities concerning the 2.6 bn and 1MDB (specifically SRC International); these overtake what was once silence. These events were in themselves presaged by two happenings, Parliament and the Umno General Assembly. The explanation to Parliament is since settled; now it’s to Umno.

Life on the Fast Lane

The following is the list of events the past ten days. Where a thing appears new this is stated in bold in that word. Where information is thought important it is also highlighted.

Nov 29: New. MACC recorded statements from Low Taek Jho (Jho Low) and SRC director Suboh Md Yassin. Side note. SRC was a 1MDB subsidiary until 2012 when transferred to the Finance Ministry.

Dec 3: Najib Razak skips Parliament. On his behalf, Zahid Hamidi says,

(a) 2.6 bn is political fund.

(b) 2.6 billion is unrelated to 1MDB, repeating a previous MACC statement.

(c) New. It’s sub judice to speak more. (Rather than read into the intent of that phrase uttered by both Zahid and Azalina Othman — the intent being, don’t incriminate yourself or Najib — Opposition politicians, lawyers and reporters dispute over the usage of sub judice as if only they know the law whereas AG people are completely stupid.)

(d) New. Both Azalina and Zahid repeatedly insisted that there is no law against political funding.

Dec 3: New. MACC met Najib’s people to fix interview date with himself on two matters, (a) SRC Int’l, and (b) 2.6 bn.

Dec 3: MACC confirms interview with Najib Razak — and here’s the difference — on 1MDB (SRC Int’l) and money (not specifically 2.6 bn) in personal bank account.

Dec 5: New. Najib Razak interviewed by MACC. Scope unknown.

Dec 7: New. Via NST, MACC said it had teams in Middle East meeting with 2.6 bn ‘donor’, not identified, including name, nationality, residence. Three times, in its short report, NST defines 2.6 billion as a political fund though the term is not attributed to MACC.

Dec 7: New. Najib on TV. NST opened its report this way, letting on the impression that Najib was prefacing a court trial statement of defense although done through TV: “Insisting that his conscience is clear, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said he did not breach any regulations in the case involving the RM2.6 billion in political funding and said the truth would prevail.“

Truth and the Law

Here is the extrapolation of those events, above, taken together. That is, it is as if those events are reaching out to a two-fold objective: the political and the legal. (This part of the post is legalistic therefore tedious, but they are crucial in building the foundations to the ultimate conclusion. Press on.)

Political: Answering Parliament was the easiest to get past. To Umno in general, Muhyiddin Yassin and Mahathir Mohamad in particular, those events reaffirm Najib’s TV defense: (a) his ‘conscience is clear’; no moral or legal transgression, (b) ‘truth will prevail’; as proof, he is prepared to be investigated, interviewed by MACC, statements had been given by various parties, and MACC has confirmed source of money; PAC doing its job, it is ‘satisfied’, Arul Kanda went there.

Law: In spite of Najib’s continued insistence, and although the AG is on his side, ‘advising’, this is still the most dicey part and, worse for it, Najib’s political life, hence his position, hinges on whether there is a crime.

Fact 1. 2.6 bn received;

Fact 2. Personal account;

Fact 3. Money source confirmed.

Criminality centers on the law, obviously, but on which hangs two questions: (1) For what is this money? And, (2) How is this money derived? To answer those questions then one has to fall back on the MACC Act because only the MACC is the active investigation authority; others don’t matter.

(1) What is this money?

Answer: It’s dirty money if it were for gratification. Money here is purely a form of gratification; there are other forms. To repeat, the MACC Act defines money’s existence merely as one form of ‘gratification’ among other forms: ‘donation, gift, loan, fee, reward, valuable security, property or interest in property being property of any description whether movable or immovable, or any similar advantage.‘

This money has to go to an individual person. The Act appears silent whether a person, as a legal human entity, not a dog or a pig, might include an association, a body of persons, or group. This point is important and we shall return shortly to it.

MACC Act Section 16 is subtitled: Any person who by himself, or in conjunction with any other person. After which, subsection ‘a’ says: Corruptly solicits, receives, or agrees to receive for himself or for any other person. (While a-subsection talks of ‘receiving’, there is a b-subsection that talks of ‘giving’ and, there, Chua Soi Lek nearly blew it for Najib when he said the MCA got some money out of the 2.6 bn.)

Thus, there is money and there is confirmation of its receipt.

(2) How is this money derived?

MACC Act Section 23, which is straightforward in defining how money is gotten: Offence of using office or position for gratification: any public officer who uses his office or position for any gratification, whether for himself, his relative or associate, commits an offence.

The gratification word comes up again. At the time of money received, Najib was prime minister. Whether the money was receive in his ‘personal’ capacity — a point alluded to by Zahid in the early stages — appears unrelated to the crime of exploiting his position for a gratification. That is, it doesn’t matter and might even work against him.

A Case Against Prosecution

So far what we have are these elements: money is a sure thing; receiving it is also a sure thing; gratification is arguable; abuse of power is almost there which, in turn, is tied in to gratification.

The MACC meeting with the ‘donor’ is therefore vital because that ‘donor’ is the flip side of the money received by Najib. He/she/they constitute the giver of the gratification. So far one has only Najib’s word for it, that there’s no gratification, and the money’s existence was, in Zahid’s early blunders, personal in nature.

But, in those early stages when money was exposed, there was damage done to Najib’s defense. Thus, the chief hurdle, if you were defense lawyer is what? Answer, and this is speculative: It is to give an objective quality or character into the 2.6 bn so as not to fit the MACC Act.

Truth is not at stake here. Nor is this purely a matter of interpretation: what is meant by a certain word. At stake is instead reality, that is, what actually makes for a corrupt act? The law presumes one version of reality of corruption; one has only to lay down not another version but another reality altogether, a reality that doesn’t fit the form prescribed in the MACC Act.

Begin with any word in the MACC definition for forms of gratification. The word ‘donation’ is pertinent and this, like the other forms of gratification, has an individual character. By individual, the MACC means ‘any person’, ‘by himself’, or ‘any other person’ (all phrases from MACC).

Past statements, such as from Zahid, had used words that alluded to objective meanings like ‘gift’ and ‘donation’ (the word, donor, is still tossed around) and ‘personal’. Any of those would have nailed Najib’s balls onto Petra Kamarudin’s bedroom wall because of their individual traits contained in them. That is, reality in the legal sense of a corrupt act refers singularly to an individual, not a dog, and not an association.

The problem then is, how to correct for those past errors?

Suggested answer: severe the link between the money or the donation and the individual receiving either. To do that is to put up another form of reality that removes the individual trait in gratification’s legal definition.

Stated another way, Najib’s new defense probably says that the money isn’t actually a personal donation. No, the money is a political fund or a form of political funding. That is, the money is directed to an association, or a body of persons not to him individually or him personally. Where the personal account is concerned, the reality of that account, or the purpose it serves, although ostensibly in his name, has another reality: it functions for another purpose; his name is not a name for him.

Here is Najib’s penultimate defense, which appears as an attempt not only to reverse the long-standing perception that the 2.6 bn was a personal affair and, therefore, had nothing to do with any association, politics especially, but that it was actually transparent to the extent the banking authorities knew beforehand.

There is no intention at all to cheat or to commit an offence because Bank Negara had been notified about the existence of this account.

Do not be confused: the account is in my name, but it is not like a personal account. And I am sure that once the investigation is completed, the truth will prevail.

To round the circle, such a defense also explains the series of events these past ten days:

Zahid’s parliamentary reply, talking about no law against political funding,

the NST reports revealing in unprecedented fashion MACC’s work-in-progress,

MACC’s own revelation about its work-in-progress, and especially,

why the AG needs to advise Najib.

Najib’s Altantuya Logic

Restated, there is in Najib’s defense, given just before and after his interview with the MACC, a sense that he is drumming into the minds at MACC this: there is no individual ‘advantage’ (MACC’s legal word) in the 2.6 bn and that the money, being political funding, cannot constitute gratification. It must be the hope that their investigation report to the AG would be able to let the latter conclude that the 2.6 bn is unrelated to Najib Razak. Case closed.

Here, though, is the truth-problem: the account has my name but it is not a personal account. In that, truth and reality collide. It employs the sort of logic used in the Altantuya Shaariibuu trial. Baginda Razak’s defense: She might have tried to blackmail me but I’ve no reason to order her killing. - https://shuzheng.wordpress.com/