Is the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Chief Commissioner Tan Sri Dzulkifli Ahmad emulating the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in refusing to have any media conference because he is afraid like the Prime Minister that his boasts and bombasts may be pricked by journalists’ sharp questioning?
Najib achieved a few “firsts” in his visit to the White House and meeting with US President Donald Trump on Sept. 12 – one of which was to strenuously avoid the press and evade any media conference from the Washington White House Press Corps who might ask him embarrassing questions about Malaysia’s global kleptocracy, 1MDB scandal, “MO1” and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) largest kleptocratic litigation to forfeit US$1.7 billion 1MDB-linked assets in United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Today is Dzulkifli’s first major address to an international conference, the 9th International Conference on Financial Crime and Terrorism Financing since his appointment as Chief Commissioner of MACC a year ago.
However, after his keynote address at the international conferenc, he did one thing which key-note speakers do not do – he declined to take questions from the media.
Why was it necessary for Dzulkifli to “play safe” by avoiding a media conference, if the MACC has nothing to hide in its campaign to fight corruption in Malaysia?
Clearly, there are several issues Dzulkifli wants to avoid, just as Najib wanted to avoid several issues in the Rose Garden of the White House if he had a press conference with the White House press corps.
Leading the issues which Dzulkifli would want to avoid being asked by the media are:
• Why MACC dare not re-open investigations into 1MDB scandal, when it continues to made international waves and headlines – the latest being former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner, who had been linked to the 1MDB scandal, barred from the US securities industry for failing to provide documents for 1MDB investigations;
• Has the MACC accepted the RM5 million allocation to Yayasan Prihatin SPRM announced by the Prime Minister when opening the new MACC building in Putrajaya, and whether this will compromise MACC’s integrity and professionalism;
• What is the actual cost of the new MACC headquarters in Putrajaya to become the world’s biggest anti-corruption complex, what is the use of having the world’s biggest anti-corruption complex when not a single “shark” had been arrested, charged and jailed in Malaysia unlike so many “dragons” in China and “crocodiles” in Indonesia; and
• What is MACC doing to clear and cleanse Malaysia of the indignity, ignominy and infamy of being regarded world-wide as a globoal kleptocracy?
When will Dzulkifli schedule a comprehensive no-holds-barred media conference on what MACC had achieved in the past one year under his stewardship?