(FMT) – Attorney-General Mohamed Apandi Ali should lodge a police report for criminal defamation following two articles posted by blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, a retired judge said.
Gopal Sri Ram said Apandi could also file a defamation suit against the blogger.
“That course of filing a suit is always open to him. However, given the nature of the comments and the seriousness of the allegation, this is a case of criminal defamation,” he told FMT.
Sri Ram said this in response to two articles by Raja Petra titled “Strong Rumours Surrounding the AG: Part 1 and Part 2” published in his Malaysia Today blog on Friday and Sunday.
Raja Petra, who left the country in the midst of a court case, is known to reside in the United Kingdom.
In the article on Friday, he had claimed that there was a meeting in 2015 between the then chief justice Arifin Zakaria, current chief justice Raus Shariff and current Court of Appeal president Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudin with Prime Minister Najib Razak.
He claimed the meeting was about an alleged plot by then attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail with some others to bring down the government through investigations on 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) and its former subsidiary SRC International.
Raja Petra also alleged that Apandi had demanded RM4 million from a Chinese businessman, identified as a “business partner” of the Sultan of Johor, on a case he had won.
Apandi, who has denied the allegations of corruption contained in the first article, said he intended to sue the writer “till kingdom come”.
“It is all rubbish and highly defamatory.
“I am seriously going to sue and am consulting my lawyer friends in the United Kingdom. This is nothing but fake news done with an evil intention,” Apandi told The Star.
The former Federal Court judge was appointed attorney-general on July 28, 2015 following the abrupt removal of Gani while the investigations into 1MDB and SRC by a special task force was ongoing.
On Jan 26 last year, Apandi cleared Najib of any criminal wrongdoing related to the two companies.
Sri Ram, who has returned to law practice, said he had known Apandi for many years and the nature of the allegation did not fit in with his character.
“It is therefore frivolous and highly improbable,” Sri Ram added.
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