Malaysia has again made dubious history where a former Attorney-General was torn to pieces by the Judiciary as a liar and without credibility on his role as top legal officer of the land.

I have read High Court judge, Justice Azimah binti Omar’s 100-page judgment in the defamation case Mohamad Apandi bin Ali vs Lim Kit Siang, which was made public on Friday.

It is a must-reading for all prospective Attorney-Generals for the judgment read like an indictment of Apandi’s failures as Attorney-General for some three years under the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak.

The questions posed by Justice Azimah should be answered by Apandi immediately, as they are public interest questions which all Malaysians want to know and not merely legal issues between Apandi and me.

Justice Azimah said Apandi’s “actions and inactions (during his tenure as Attorney-General) indubitably give rise to a plethora of harrowing suspicions and questions” which did not “appear out of thin air” but arose from Apandi’s “actions and inactions, directly or indirectly” which “may be seen to have assisted in the cover-up of the 1MDB scandal and the personalities involved in the same scandal”.

Paragraph 136 to 139 of the Azimah judgement sum up these “suspicions and questions”, viz:

“136. Through the entire breadth of the Plaintiff’s (Apandi) testimony, the Plaintiff has failed to give any cogent reasons behind his perplexing insistence to adopt the donation narrative (while absolving Najib Razak) although he readily admitted that his Riyadh delegation has utterly failed in its mission to verify the truth behind the fabled and fantastical donation. The Plaintiff further failed to afford any sound justification behind his puzzling decision to bend the truth regarding the supposed success of the Riyadh delegation (while in truth and reality, the Riyadh delegation had failed to speak or even meet with the fabled donor).

“ 137. The Plaintiff also failed to explain his glaring lack of proper knowledge behind the supposed evidences and statements the Riyadh delegation collected, to the extent that the Plaintiff could not even remember the name of the fabled or the famous donor he so intently contended upon.

“138. The Plaintiff further failed to make any good sense out of his unwavering and unyielding insistence to not offer to seek mutual legal assistance from the Swiss government and the United States DOJ although admitting that mutual legal assistance may well bolster local investigations especially in view of tracing the monies which were siphoned out of the Malaysian jurisdiction.

“139. the Plaintiff then failed to explain his eager adoption of the donation narrative although he kne w full well that part of the monies (SRC monies) were paid from SRC’s accounts and not from any Saudi Royalty’s accounts. The Plaintiff further failed to explain his hasty decision to NFA/KUS the investigation (against the recommendations of the MACC and his own internal task force) although knowing full well that his own Riyadh delegation’s investigations were incomplete.” (NFA/KU stands for “No Further Action” and “Kemas untuk Simpan”)

But the importance of the Azimah judgement goes beyond the former Attorney-General as it has completely demolished Najib’s narrative that the RM2.6 billion donation in the 1MDB scandal was from the former King of Saudi Arabia.

The Azimah judgement referred to the “first obvious untruth” in Apandi’s Press Conference Statement of 26.1.2016, where Apandi “brazenly and confidently announced” that his own delegation had flown to Riyadh and personally met the alleged donor himself and recorded the donor’s own personal confirmation of the donation.

This was a lie as Apandi testified on cross-examination that his delegation did not even meet nor speak to the alleged donor!

What is Najib’s response in the Azimah judgement in the Apandi case that there is no evidence of the “fabled and fantastic” RM2.6 billion donation from Saudi royalty?

(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 24th July 2022)