By Clara Chooi
The Malaysian Insider
Apr 08, 2011

KUCHING, April 8 — DAP accused Datuk Seri Najib Razak today of siding with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in the recent death of a Customs officer under its probe, casting doubt on the prime minister’s pledge of a thorough investigation into the incident.

Party advisor Lim Kit Siang said Najib should have abstained from giving his own evaluation of the circumstances surrounding Selangor Customs assistant director Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed’s death on Wednesday as it gave the impression that he was taking the side of the graftbusting agency.

“Najib claimed Sarbani’s case was different from Teoh Beng Hock’s as he was not being questioned at the time of his death.

“Najib said that Sarbani went to the MACC’s office voluntarily to change his statement and thereon, died in the blink of an eye,” he told a press conference at DAP’s city headquarters here today.

Lim was referring to Najib’s statement to reporters here yesterday, in which the prime minister explained his understanding of the circumstances prior to Sarbani’s death.

Najib had said that while the incident has similarities to Teoh’s death two years ago, the situations were different as Sarbani was not at the time being questioned by the MACC.

“From I have been told, he (Sarbani) had gone to the MACC office voluntarily to change his statement. When the MACC officer left him to get their statement, that’s when it happened.

Najib said the circumstances in Teoh and Sarbani’s deaths had been different.“It happened in the blink of an eye,” Najib told reporters after attending a function at SMK Santubong. “This is different from Teoh Beng Hock as the officer was not being questioned.”

“How can he take the MACC’s explanation as an official version? If he said there will be a full and thorough investigation, he should just leave it be.

“Sarbani’s family and friends said he had been called in. He was playing tennis the day before, too. But MACC said they did not call him.

“So are we now saying that Sarbani went himself to the MACC office, only to jump off the building on his own?” Lim questioned.

Sarbani was found dead on the ground outside the MACC’s office in Jalan Cochrane here at about 10.20am on Wednesday, where he is believed to have fallen out of the building’s third-floor window.

His death comes as a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) is investigating MACC operational procedures and the death of DAP political aide Teoh on July 16, 2009 after a coroner’s inquest returned an open verdict of neither suicide nor homicide.

Today, Lim said based on Najib’s statement and the experience from Teoh’s case, it was doubtful the authorities would conduct a full and transparent investigation on Sarbani’s death.

“Something is very wrong with our system of governance. Najib’s alphabet soup of policies — his NKRA, NEM, GTP, ETP — do not hide the fact that the system of governance in Malaysia is just getting worse,” he said.

He added that the MACC had been formed following the public’s declining confidence in the former graftbusting agency, the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA).

“The MACC was supposed to have more power, funds and personnel to wipe out corruption but in just two years, public confidence in the MACC became even worse than it was when we had the ACA.

“We have Teoh’s case, now Sarbani’s case and the fact that the Teoh RCI revealed that MACC officers watch porn during important interrogations,” he said.

Lim pointed out that the MACC was also clearly biased towards the ruling Barisan Nasional administration as it had failed to open investigations on a series of corruption allegations made against Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud.

“If the allegations are made against Pakatan Rakyat politicians, the MACC would have files and cupboards full of reports. But nothing was done on Taib,” he said.

Lim also called for the formation of an RCI to look into claims Taib, through his “corrupt” regime, had plundered the state’s natural resources over the past three decades of his rule.

“Explain why is it that such a rich state is now one of the poorest in the country and yet in the meantime, Taib has become one of the world’s richest men,” he said.

He added that such a probe would be in the interest of not only Malaysians but the world.