Article From ASIA SENTINEL

A Malaysian Private Eye Recants an Explosive Statement

Our Correspondent
04 July 2008
Complete reversal on charges against Malaysia's deputy prime minister raises questions of political pressure

Related Story: More Twists in Murder PlotSee: Balasubramaniam's Statutory Declarations

In a stunning turnaround that raises as many questions as it answers, the Kuala Lumpur-based private investigator who set off a firestorm Thursday by alleging that Deputy prime Minister Najib Tun Razak was involved in the 2006 murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu today retracted the entire contents of his statutory declaration and said he had made it under duress (Note: Both declarations can be found here).
Media in Kuala Lumpur reported that P. Balasubramaniam, a private investigator who once represented accused murderer Abdul Razak Baginda, said everything he had alleged in his July 1 statutory declaration was wrong, then rushed off without taking questions. Local media also reported that he had come under severe pressure after releasing the declaration in the company of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim Thursday.
The investigator did not say who pressured him to issue the initial statement, but his action raised the inevitable specter that powerful political forces are at work over the sensational murder. The allegations against Najib have already undermined his standing as the heir apparent to the leadership of the powerful United Malays National Organization. The prominent Internet journalist Raja Petra Kamaruddin in his own statutory declaration recently flatly stated that Najib's wife had been present at Altantuya's execution. Raja Petra now faces charges of sedition and is scheduled to go on trial in October.Opposition leaders denounced the retraction as the result of political pressure and called for an investigation. To Balasubramaniam's assertion that he had been pressured into making the original statement, they pointed out that he was in the company of his own lawyer, Americk Singh Sidhu, when he made the statement public to reporters. The respected independent reform organization Aliran issued a statement questioning the reversal and said that an assistant superintendant of police had met with Balasubramaniam at the Brickfields police station in Kuala Lumpur the night after he made his first statement, and that his second was witnessed by a commissioner of oaths named Zainul Abidin Muhayat from an address of the law firm Zul Rafique and Partners, reportedly owned by the brother of Federal Territories Minister, Zulhasnan Rafique. The minister is a top UMNO wheelhorse.The ongoing trial has thus far avoided questioning Najib or bringing his name into the proceedings, with both prosecutors and defense attorneys challenging attempts to have him brought into the proceedings. Given the assertions by Raja Petra and Balasubramaniam it seems almost inconceivable that the High Court hearing the case would not reopen it to attempt to get at the truth.
Anwar, who himself faces recent allegations of forcibly sodomizing a 23-year-old man who works in his office, was excoriated by pro-government loyalists from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition led by UMNO after he released the initial declaration. Najib and Anwar are bitter rivals for power who were once allied in UMNO before Anwar was booted out of the deputy prime minister’s job in 1998 and later jailed on sexual perversion charges. Building on opposition gains in the March elections, Anwar has declared his intention to unseat the BN by September.
Najib called the private investigator’s statement “a desperate move by Anwar Ibrahim to divert attention from the sodomy allegation he is facing.”
For some, the episode reveals rot inside the political system. “They are all damaged, it doesn’t matter, really,” said a disgusted lawyer and political insider in Kuala Lumpur. “I think new leaders will emerge after this mess.”
In the new declaration, a sworn statement made in writing as was his first, Balasubramaniam said: "I wish to retract the entire contents of my statutory declaration dated July 1, 2008. I was compelled to affirm the said statutory declaration under duress.
"I wish to expressly state that at no material time did (Abdul) Razak (Abdullah) Baginda inform me that he was introduced to Altantuya Shaariibuu by a VIP and at no material time did Razak Baginda inform me that Datuk Seri Najib (Tun Razak) had a sexual relationship with Altantuya Shaaribu and that she was susceptible to anal intercourse. At no material time did Razak Baginda inform me that Datuk Seri Najib instructed Razak Baginda to look after Altantuya Shaaribu as he did not want her to harass him since he was the Deputy Prime Minister."
Balasubramaniam’s previous statement was extraordinarily detailed, accusing the deputy prime minister of having had an affair with Altantuya and introducing her to Razak; he also recounted SMS conversations between Razak and Najib on the night of her murder. The statement described the cars that came to take the woman away, related conversations with the accused and described his disappointment at the fact that a detailed statement he had given police about the matter had been censored so completely that nothing of the relationship between Razak and Najib survived.
Razak went on trial in June 2007 for Altantuya’s murder along with two of Najib’s bodyguards, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar of the elite Unit Tindak Khas or Special Police Action Unit. The 28-year-old Mongolian woman was shot twice in the head on October 19, 2006 and her body dumped in a patch of jungle near the suburban city of Shah Alam before she was blown up with explosives.
Balasubramaniam wrote in his first declaration that he wanted the “relevant authorities to reopen their investigations into this case immediately so that any fresh evidence may be presented to the Court prior to submissions at the end of the prosecution’s case.”
In that declaration Balasubramaniam, who was hired to help Razak deal with the woman, said he repeatedly tried to get Razak to have Altantuya arrested for harassment, but that he refused to do so.
The July 1 statement described in meticulous detail a series of visits by Altantuya and two friends from Mongolia to Razak’s office and home, seeking to corner the political analyst about their relationship and demanding US$500,000 for her services as a translator in a questionable transaction involving Malaysia’s purchase of French submarines.
The document also purported to confirm long-reported rumors that Najib, Razak and Altantuya had been at a dinner in Paris during the time when the submarine transaction was being negotiated. It described conversations with Altantuya, in which she told the private investigator that Razak had even bought her a house in Mongolia





More Twists in Malaysian Murder Trial
Our Correspondent
03 July 2008
Deputy Prime Minister romantically linked to murdered Mongolian translator in court declaration UPDATE: More Twists in Malaysian Murder Trial
One of Malaysia’s most powerful politicians has been tied to murdered Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu in court documents filed by a private investigator who had been protecting one of the men accused in the case before her disappearance. A statutory declaration filed with a Kuala Lumpur court by the investigator alleges that Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak not only knew the murdered woman but had an affair with her, was involved in her disappearance and introduced her to Abdul Razak Baginda, the man who is now on trial for her murder.
The court declaration by P Balasubramaniam, a private investigator and retired policeman hired by Razak Baginda, was made public by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is currently under fire from charges that he raped a male member of his office. The counterattack by Anwar on Najib, one of his staunchest critics, raises the heat in the country’s current battle for power as the resurgent opposition tries to unseat the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition that has governed the country since independence in 1957.
The Altantuya murder, with its long-rumored ties to Najib, has been a tantalizing target for government foes, who until now have been unable to get Najib officially linked to the case. In the declaration, Balasubramaniam’s declaration makes Najib an integral part of the case, something most of Malaysia’s top government and judicial officials have been seeking to avoid ever since Razak went on trial in June 2006 along with two of Najib’s bodyguards for the gruesome murder. The 28-year-old Mongolian woman was shot twice in the head and her body dumped in a patch of jungle near the suburban city of Shah Alam before she was blown up with explosives.
The declaration was made by the investigator because of his “disappointment at the standard of investigations conducted by the authorities into the circumstances surrounding the murder of Altantuya Shaaribuu.” Balasubramaniam wrote that he wanted the “relevant authorities to reopen their investigations into this case immediately so that any fresh evidence may be presented to the Court prior to submissions at the end of the prosecutions [sic] case.”
While part of the court record, the declaration, which is a written statement signed by the person making it who declares it to be true before a person authorized to take declarations, was not given under formal oath.
In the declaration Balasubramaniam, who was hired to help Razak deal with the woman, said he repeatedly tried to get Razak to have Altantuya arrested for harassment, but that he refused to do so. Razak, he said, told him that she had “been given powers by a Mongolian ‘bomoh’ [spirit doctor] and that he could never look her in the face because of this.”
Razak told Balasubramaniam he had been introduced to Altantuya “by a VIP…who asked him to look after her financially.” According to the statement, he was becoming concerned that he could be harmed personally and that his daughter needed to be protected also. There followed a series of visits by Altantuya and two friends from Mongolia to Razak’s office and home.
Balasubramaniam wrote that on October 14, five days before she disappeared, “Aminah [Altantuya’s nickname] turned up at Abdul Razak Baginda’s house in Damansara Heights when I was not there. Abdul Razak Baginda called me on my handphone to inform me of this so I rushed back to his house.
“As I arrived, I noticed Aminah outside the front gates shouting, ‘Razak, bastard, come out from the house.’ I tried to calm her down but couldn’t so I called the police who arrived in two patrol cars. I explained the situation to the police, who took her away to the Brickfields police station.”
At that point, the woman told Balasubramaniam to deliver a note to Razak demanding US$500,000.00 and three tickets to Mongolia “apparently as commission owed to Aminah from a deal in Paris.” [Najib and Razak have long been under fire for a reported US$111 million commission that Abdul Razak took through a company he owned that was linked to the US$1 billion purchase of three submarines by the Malaysian military from the French military.]
The police urged the warring parties to settle the affair amicably, according to the declaration. They returned to Razak’s house, where Razak then told Balasubramaniam that Najib had introduced him to Altantuya at a diamond exhibition in Singapore and that Najib had had a sexual relationship with her in the past. Razak was to look after the woman because Najib “did not want her to harass him since he was now the Deputy Prime Minister.”
The document also purports to confirm long-reported rumors that Najib, Razak and Altantuya had been at a dinner in Paris during the time when the submarine transaction was being negotiated. During the trial, a cousin of Altantuya’s said she had seen a picture of the three at dinner, but the prosecution and defense both refused to take the matter further.
On October 19, the night she disappeared, Balasubramaniam claimed that Altantuya told him that she had met Razak in Singapore with Najib, that she was promised US$500,000 as a commission for assisting in the submarine transaction and that Razak had purchased a house for her in Mongolia. She also said that her brother had refinanced the house and she needed money to get back the property. She also claimed that Razak had married her in South Korea.
In the declaration, the investigator said that shortly after that conversation a red Proton car appeared with a woman and two men, whom he identified as female officer Lance Corporal Rohaniza and Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azahar, the two bodyguards who worked for Najib and are now on trial. All three were in plain clothes and they took the woman away. Balasubramaniam said he thought she was being arrested.
“They drove off and that is the last I ever saw of Aminah,” the private investigator wrote.
On October 24, he wrote, “Abdul Razak Baginda instructed me to accompany him to the Brickfields police station as he had been advised to lodge a police report about the harassment he was receiving from these Mongolian girls.”
She was already dead.
In the document, the private investigator said he himself was arrested and held for seven days over the issue, during which time, “I told them all I knew including everything Abdul Razak Baginda and Aminah had told me about their relationships with Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak but when I came to sign my statement, these details had been left out. “
In the trial, when he was asked to give evidence, he said, “the prosecutor did not ask me any questions in respect of Aminah’s relationship with Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.”
On the day Razak was arrested, he said, “I was with him at his lawyers office at 6:30 am. Abdul Razak Baginda informed us that he had sent Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak an SMS the evening before as he refused to believe he was to be arrested, but had not received a response.
A short time later, the declaration said, Razak received an SMS from Najib that read: “matter will be solved… be cool.”



Anwar Tries To Face Down His Accusers

Our Correspondent
02 July 2008
Were the latest sodomy charges against Malaysia’s leading opposition politician trumped up?
Malaysia’s long-suffering opposition, which four months ago glimpsed its first chance in the 50-year history of the country to take power, has to figure out where it goes from here in the wake of charges by a volunteer in the office of Anwar Ibrahim that the opposition politician had sodomized him.
Anwar, the opposition coalition’s most charismatic figure, had expected to stroll through a by-election for parliament sometime in the next few weeks and be handed formal leadership of the opposition. The next step would be a no-confidence vote to sink Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the ruling Barisan Nasional, a move that would give Anwar the top job and cap a remarkable political comeback for the high-flying politician who was derailed a decade ago by sexual abuse and corruption charges. Now he first has to clear up allegations, justified or not, that have dogged him for a decade.
A former deputy prime minister and finance minister, Anwar has responded to the charges with a furious series of countercharges, lodging a formal complaint against police chief Musa Hassan and Attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail and claiming that intelligence reports from a "neighboring country" indicate that assassins were planning to kill him.
On Tuesday night he told a rally of some 15,000 supporters that he was undeterred in his quest to derail the BN. "The BN government cannot be trusted to manage the economy of this country because there is too much corruption," he told supporters, according to published reports. "Time is up, you get out, let us move in!" Anwar was reported as saying.
Anwar’s lawyers have also filed defamation charges against the accuser, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 23, who last Saturday filed the police report accusing Anwar of forcibly sodomizing him in an apartment in Damansara Heights, a posh neighborhood minutes away from parliament. Doctors from Kuala Lumpur Hospital have submitted Saiful's medical report to the police for further investigation.
Immediately after Saiful’s charges became known, Anwar headed for the Turkish embassy, alleging he could be murdered. His presence in the embassy, reportedly one of several that offered sanctuary, strained Malaysia’s relations with Turkey. Irritation is also rising with the US embassy after US State Department spokesman Tom Casey issued a statement urging that any legal action “would not be anything that was a politically motivated investigation or prosecution,” thus calling up memories of 2000, when then-US Vice President Al Gore denounced Anwar’s previous trial for sodomy as a “mockery.”
The new charges seriously complicate Anwar’s plans to contest the by-election. Anwar has predicted he would take over as prime minister in September, sweeping the coalition that has ruled the country since 1957 from power.
However, Anwar must not just win that as-yet unnamed by-election but win it by a landslide. He might already have been facing political headwinds over the fact that the government is attempting to cushion the effect of the removal of petrol subsidies, a major thorn in the side of the public. A highly-publicized attempt to push through a no-confidence motion by the Sabah Progressive Party, a presumed ally, against Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi fizzled, with members of the party accusing the leadership of selling out.
Certainly Anwar’s difficulties give the BN some badly needed breathing space after it lost its two-thirds majority in the March 8 elections for the first time since independence. The defeat came after the once-impregnable political machine suffered through a marathon series of scandals, several of them involving Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who is under fire for unsubstantiated claims over his and his wife’s supposed involvement in the gruesome 2006 murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu and for reports of profiteering on defense contracts. There have also been persistent and convincing charges of endemic corruption in the country’s judiciary.
Anwar has named Najib Razak the culprit behind the alleged conspiracy to defame him with sodomy allegations. "You know we will announce a by-election this week. I will contest in the by-election, the police knew that," he told AFP. Najib has denied Anwar’s allegations, as has Prime Minister Badawi, who was actually instrumental in getting the charges reversed from Anwar’s 1999 sexual perversion conviction.
In any case, Anwar and his party have charged that Saiful was a mole planted by the BN. Photos of Saiful with government officials have been published in local media and the Internet. One showed the alleged victim with Khairil Annas Jusoh, one of Najib's aides, at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Others featured Shahrir Abdul Samad, domestic trade and consumer affairs minister, and Azalina Othman, tourism minister.
The youth’s family, however, countered that Saiful was a student leader and that it was normal for student leaders to meet with top government officials.
The local media have been cautious this time. In 1998, when Anwar was first arrested on sodomy brought by both his step-brother and his driver, the government-controlled press pronounced Anwar guilty before the trial even began. The New Straits Times suffered a sharp decline in circulation as a boycott was organized to protest against the paper’s biased reports.
Those charges were laid after former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad dumped Anwar as finance minister and deputy premier. Anwar spent six years in prison before being released after the sexual perversion charges were reversed by a Malaysian court.
The public seems to be regarding the current charges with suspicion. One longtime observer in Kuala Lumpur said that ethnic Malays, the constituency of the dominant pro-government United Malays National Organisation, are furious with the party and many regard the charges as fabricated. According to a readers' poll on the local news website, Malaysiakini, 94 percent of 900 respondents believe that the report is a "political conspiracy," although the site draws mostly opposition supporters and the results are likely to be skewed.
The BN so far has denied any involvement in Saiful's report.
"What Anwar is saying (about his life being in danger) may not be the gospel truth. We will have to confirm the validity of his claim. He is a good orator and prone to dramatics," Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar told local media. "It makes no difference if the person who complained against him is a VIP... Justice must be done to ensure the people feel safe and protected."
Ezam Mohd Nor, a former Anwar loyalist, told reporters: "Anwar should not make assumptions of a conspiracy because it is also not logical for the government to use the same method against the same man twice just to stop him from contesting for a parliamentary seat."
Ezam rejoined UMNO after falling out with Azmin Ali, a PKR vice-president who is widely seen to be Anwar's closest confidant. A political insider suggested that he may be behind this fresh round of sodomy allegations but he has vehemently denied it. "Maybe Ezam is trying to score points with his new paymasters," an insider told Asia Sentinel.
Meanwhile, investors are jittery. The Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) plummeted 19.87 points or 1.7 percent, Forbes reported Wednesday. "The Malaysian market is being dragged down as the latest political drama has taken political uncertainties to a new level,'' Phua Kwee Hock, an analyst at SJ Securities, told Forbes. “The local market can be expected to drift listlessly in the coming months.''