Former inspector-general of police Musa Hassan has questioned the validity of Sarawak Report‘s allegation that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak paid prominent lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah RM9.5 million….
“So how can the RM9.5 million be paid to the lawyer if the account was already closed? I think this claim is not true as the payment was (alleged to have been) made on Sept 11, 2013 and Feb 17, 2014,” Musa said in a press conference in Petaling Jaya….
Dismissing Sarawak Report‘s allegation as slander, Musa said he too was a victim to such claims when he was investigating the first sodomy allegation against Anwar in 1998.
“I was also a victim of slander, I was accused of receiving RM5 million from (former prime minister) Dr Mahathir Mohamad which was supposedly put in my accounts in Singapore.
“But this is not true because I did not receive the RM5 million,” he said.
Meanwhile, citing a police report which was made based on the claims by Sarawak Report, Musa said the report was therefore false in nature.
“I hope the police will conduct investigations under Section 182 of the Penal Code for giving false information,” he added
Imagine holding a press conference to make a loud statement to the media about something that is not directly related to yourself, when you haven’t even thoroughly checked the facts.
This is what Musa Hassan, a former IGP has done. What a nightmare it must have been to work for someone that careless in a top position.
If Musa had properly examined the facts (read Sarawak Report for example) he would have noted that from day one we made clear that one of Najib’s personal accounts (no 2112022009694), the one which received $681 million in March 2013, was closed the following August:
However, our article about Shafee’s payments quite clearly cites a later account Najib opened, into which money from SRC International was paid (a subsidiary of 1MDB).
This was account number 2112022011906, which remained open until we broke the scandal in 2015. Getting these sorts of details right are the bread and butter of investigative work and something this senior officer ought to have been taught in police college.
It is lucky he is now retired and perhaps he should keep it that way, instead of digging his friends into deeper holes, when they themselves are plainly deciding that silence is the better option.