YOURSAY | Country with huge subsidies may ultimately go broke

Subsidies, the national debt burden and the Budget deficit may not be the immediate issues. MACC Chief Azam Bakar recently announced new approaches on tackling bribery and corruption, money laundering activities and "secret profits", presumably without the criminal court entering the picture, MACC should file civil action for freezing, seizing and forfeiting money laundering assets and "secret profits" as state revenue. The errant parties will be left with a house, car and some money. The cases can also be settled out of court without prejudice based on recent precedents where the alleged thief keeps 60 per cent and surrenders 40 per cent. Civil action will help address the Budget deficit and mitigate subsidies and the national debt burden. The unity government has shown extreme reluctance on filing civil action. Instead, it files politically-motivated criminal suits for selective prosecution based on selective political persecution. This approach doesn't help us on getting back the money. The alleged criminals may be jailed but they will come out laughing all the way to the bank. Najib, for example, was jailed in the RM42m SRC International case based on High Court Judge Nazlan saying that the former Prime Minister did not return the money. No one, facing criminal charges, will return any money involved. Najib could have been asked to deposit the money in court. SRC should then prove the money belongs to them. Unfortunately, this approach was not taken as the money was no longer with Najib. Also, SRC may not be able to prove it belongs to them when Najib did not deposit the money in his personal account/s. He just spent the money on corporate social responsibility activities. In law, an account holder can spend money in the account. Under the international definition of money laundering, read compliant by national law, RM42m may not be that large a sum under the law. So, civil action may not be possible especially since the money was no longer with Najib. According to what was revealed in court, nine people got the RM42m. The money could be seized, as "secret profits", if it was still with them. So, the SRC case was about jailing Najib by hook or by crook. It was politically motivated case, for getting him out of the way, based on selective political prosecution for selective political persecution.

02:38 AM, 06 Oct 2023