De facto law minister Nancy Shukri has wrongly interpreted the lawyer-client confidentiality privilege in refusing to disclose the sum that the government paid lawyer Shafee Abdullah over the Sodomy II appeal, said a DAP MP today.
"As a lawyer myself, I would say that the confidentiality only applies to a lawyer disclosing details of his clients or of the case."It never applies to disclosing the amount that the client has to pay the lawyer," Kulai MP Teo Nie Ching (right) told a press conference at the Parliament lobby.
Teo also pointed out that in 2011, then de facto law minister Nazri Abdul Aziz revealed in Parliament the legal fees that the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) had paid Shafee to act as their lawyer in the Teoh Beng Hock case.
"Why is there a policy change in the government within two years?" she asked.
Last week, Nancy said the government cannot reveal the amount of money it was paying to engage Shafee's services due to the "confidentiality between client and lawyer".
Nancy only said that the government was paying a "nominal sum" to engage Shafee's services.
In the written answer given to Teo in 2011, Nazri said that the government had paid Shafee RM150,000 with regard to the Teoh Beng Hock case.
"This is taxpayers' money. The government should explain how much it is paying Shafee," Teo said.
She also questioned why the government found it necessary to hire a private practitioner to act as a prosecutor only for the sodomy case, and not for other cases that involved public interest.
"Why only for Anwar's case? The Port Klang Free Trade Zone (PKFZ) case involved RM 12.5 million of taxpayers money. Why wasn't any respectable lawyer engaged to assist the attorney-general on the case?" she asked.
She said that the government need not necessarily hire Shafee for other cases but could hire many other respectable and talented lawyers for other cases as well.
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