Paulsen: Whistleblower law is against public interest

Without public and media pressure, 1MDB scandal would have been hushed up, says lawyer.

KUALA LUMPUR: A civil rights group has questioned the usefulness of Whistleblower Protection Act, saying that the financial scandals involving 1Malaysia Development Bhd would have been hushed up if not for public and media pressure.

Eric Paulsen, head of the Lawyers for Liberty group, said the act was incapable of protecting whistleblowers.

Three highly questionable provisions in the law made it incompatible with whistleblowing, he said.

One section removed protection for any disclosure prohibited by law, such as banking confidentiality regulations or the Officials Secrets Act.

There was no protection if the merits of government policy, including policy of a public body, came under question as a result of the disclosures.

Whistleblowers who invoke the law and then discolose information to the press or an MP would face criminal penalties, he said.

Paulsen said the act was not designed to serve the public interest or combat corruption.

Instead, it placed potential whistleblowers in a dilemma, of forcing them to go through a “false whistleblower protection procedure where very little will be done and more importantly, to stop them from going to the press or to the authorities’ political adversaries”.

There would have been no transparency if the Edge weekly and its Financial Daily had gone through the procedure, Paulsen said.

“Let us be clear: without any media and public pressure, the whole 1MDB scandal would simply have been hushed up.”

The government has suspended the publishing licences of The Edge and the Financial Daily for three months following its extensive coverage of dubious financial investments and transactions by the 1MDB.

In its latest issue this week, Financial Daily published a trail of financial transactions which purported to show that Penang-born businessman Jho Low and PetroSaudi International, a joint venture partner of 1MDB, had conspired to defraud the Malaysian taxpayer of US$1.83 billion.