Sabah Umno Deputy head Datuk Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan said those still disputing Tun Musa Aman’s appointment as the new Sabah Governor to refer to the decision of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), Hong Kong, which found there was actually no case to proceed.
This is in relation to the disputed 44 alleged corruption and money laundering charges which were suddenly resurrected during the first Pakatan Harapan federal government despite the ICAC findings, before finally being dropped by the Perikatan Nasional federal government led by Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
“Because previously, an opposition member of parliament at the time, had made the same corruption complaint against Musa to the ICAC.
ICAC is one of the most respected anti-corruption agencies on the international stage.
As UMNO spokesman, Mr Dahlan was one of the most vociferous loudmouths on behalf of Najib, claiming that not a cent had been stolen from 1MDB right up to the day they were kicked from office.
Now, as UMNO’s remaining 30 MPs push hard to compensate for their lightweight electoral mandate, he is promoting similar disinformation on behalf of Musa.
To be clear, the case in Hong Kong was dropped after the 3 year limitation passed for the necessary mutual assistance from Malaysia to help prosecute the case against Michael Chia who was smuggling a bag of RM40 million in cash through the airport, destination KL. It was not because the Hong Kong investigators had ‘found Chia to be innocent’ but because his political allies in UMNO refused to cooperate.
The AG in charge in Malaysia at the time was the in-law of Chia’s boss, Musa Aman, namely Abdul Gani Patail.
Back in Malaysia, Patail and co later publicly ‘cleared’ Musa and Chia (like Apandi ‘cleared’ Najib) on the basis that the money, whose origin was unexplained, was a ‘political donation’ that they just happened to decide to secret through customs in a suitcase in SG$10,000 notes, rather than declaring it and using a normal banking transaction.
When, after the 2018 election, the MACC was finally allowed to investigate the case, prosecutors confirmed the money was part of a massive multi-million dollar timber kickback racket that Chia had been running for Musa Aman and they charged Musa on 46 counts. Those charges were not ‘resurrected’ as there had been no such investigation initiated by the corrupt Najib government.
The same charges did not later get dropped because investigators revised their conclusions and exonerated Musa, but because UMNO got back into the driving seat owing to the backdoor coup in 2020. As a result those ‘party political donations’ that went into Musa’s private Swiss bank accounts remain apparently unrecovered.
Clearly, this is the shining example of conduct that Mr Dahlan believes the new Governor of Sabah can present to the people of the state. Perhaps those ‘political donations’ to UMNO have finally found their way into the party coffers – or at least a good percentage?