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Tim Leissner’s revelations under oath in a court of law in New York in recent weeks were troubling and traumatic for some families in Malaysia. Leissner’s reckless allegations showed how sensitive and easily riled we get as a people to any implied or direct criticism of people we regard as friends or hold in some esteem.
Now these disclosures by the feral liar, Leissner have resulted in a Malaysian, Roger Ng being convicted for bribery, corruption and larceny. One reason Roger voluntarily went to New York was his defence attorney’s belief that he would get a fair trial in the US. The other reason was to escape the appalling conditions in Malaysia’s penitentiary, detention and holding centres. When someone commits an offence there is no need to aggravate the matter by subjecting the accused person to degrading, inhuman and unhealthy detention conditions.
Double Standards
If Najib could be spared these privations why should Roger Ng be subject to them.
Roger Ng’s is not the first major trial abroad that involves well known members of prominent Malaysian families. In the 1980s during the trials involving the Carrian affair there was much unhappiness about revelations made in court in Hongkong about Lorrain Osman by George Tan. These events were reported by Rita Gomez for the Straits Times. On the basis of these revelations there will be other adverse inferences and innuendos
The high authorities in Malaysia disliked it so much that they even criticised our own esteemed Auditor-General Tan Sri Ahmad Noordin Zakaria for observations that coincided with Tan’s testimony. We used all sorts of excuses to explain the loss of US$1 billion in Hongkong, trying to deflect attention from the avariciousness, incompetence and corrupt actions of Lorrain, Hashim Shamsuddin, Rais Saniman and Ibrahim Jaafar. These men were accustomed to high living, luxury, frequent overseas travel and sought easy illegal gains in breach of their fiduciary functions. They did what PM6 and his wife did, albeit on a relatively more modest scale.
Leissner’s testimony has implicated some members of a new generation of women. This is unfortunate. It would seem they had let down their guard with a seemingly moneyed Caucasian who came across as scheming, charming but carefully concealing his voyeuristic persona.
But he had underlying ulterior motives. In the IMDB case too a former central bank governor’s husband is also implicated, obviously with her active or passive complicity.
Sacred Trust
Issues that impinge on the National Interest have to be accorded the highest significance, security, care, sensitivity and should stand up to transparency and scrutiny. They have to be treated as a sacred issue of trusteeship.
We need to recreate, recognise and reward people of the highest integrity, intellectual honesty, loyalty and moral courage like Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, Tun Ismail Ali, Raja Tun Mohar, Raja Tun Muhammad Alias and Dato Rastam Hadi.
Our younger generation of Malaysians must be taught about the courage, integrity, and straightforwardness of these men and understand their sense of personal sacrifice and high sense of duty. Loyalty to the nation is what matters, not to individuals who hold high office.
When institutions and professional individuals charged with specific check and balance functions fail to perform their designated roles they create avenues for bribery, compromise, corruption, larceny and pose a direct threat to our National Interest. That is what Najib Razak and Lorrain Osman did.
While Roger Ng emerges as the villain of the piece from that New York Court conviction of April 8 he was, in a sense a victim of the failure of an avaricious and corrupt prime minister, incompetent managers of the country’s public funds and the inefficiency of some of our public institutions.
In both the Carrian collapse and the 1MDB debacle it was humongous sums of Malaysian money that were lost. The enablers of these catastrophic losses were highly placed bankers and the country’s sixth prime minister.
Roger Ng, like George Tan in the Carrian collapse, took advantage of the vulnerability, slovenliness, avariciousness and weaknesses of our own highly placed officials.
For these kinds of positions of trust it is not just qualifications, popularity or amenabilty that matters but excellence of character. The country must invest in inculcating values of honesty, hardwork, probity and impeccable character.
M Santhananaban
April 10, 2022
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