Ahmad Zaki has only been director-general of the ACA for slightly over a year and he is therefore totally incompetent and unqualified to talk about the ACA’s past 32 years, especially as he himself did not rise from the ACA ranks and was appointed to the top post from outside the service.
Ahmad Zaki was clearly referring to the recent court testimony by his predecessor, former ACA director-general, Datuk Shafee Yahya who told the Anwar Ibrahim trial that Mahathir had personally ordered the ACA in June 1998 to drop an investigation into the then Economic Planning Unit director-general, Tan Sri Ali Abul Hassan Sulaiman, who was later appointed Bank Negara Governor, after the agency raided Ali’s office and found a large sum of money.
Shafee said Mahathir called him up after the raid and he was "told off". The Prime Minister’s words were: "How dare you raid my senior officer's office?", accused him of "trying to fix" the official and wanted to know whether he had acted under the instruction of Anwar.
Ahmad Zaki was reported as saying in Langkawi on Thursday that all this while various parties had made comments and criticisms of the ACA at political ceramah, in the media, Internet, Parliament and the courts during cases prosecuted by the ACA.
He said: "If they can do so, why can’t the Prime Minister (Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad), who is the head of government, give advice, comment and criticism about the ACA if he thinks what we do is improper?"
Is Ahmad Zaki claiming that it is proper for the Prime Minister to ring up the ACA director-general to express anger and outrage that his senior officer had been raided and to order the ACA to drop investigations?
Ahmad Zaki clearly is in no position to have any personal knowledge about Shafee’s serious allegation. However, it is a sad commentary on his credibility, independence and integrity as the ACA director-general that he dared not even say that if Mahathir had done what Shafee had alleged, the Prime Minister had committed not only a gross impropriety and abused his office, but committed a corruption offence under the law of the land!
In his first year in office, Ahmad Zaki had given the public the impression that the ACA was nothing more than a political tool to be used in the Mahathir-Anwar Ibrahim battle, as illustrated by the alacrity with which the ACA acted on the allegations by the former Bank Negara assistant governor Datuk Abdul Murad Khalid in his statutory declaration in October 1998 that Anwar had amassed a fortune of RM3 billion while in government through 20 "Master Accounts".
Although Murad did not produce a single shred of evidence to subtantiate his very serious allegations, the ACA swung into action with Ahmad Zaki announcing the setting up of a special team to investigate into Murad’s allegations against Anwar headed by the agency's Investigations Division director Abdul Razak Idris.
In the run-up to the dissolution of Parliament and the holding of general elections, the ACA was making almost daily statements about investigations into Anwar on the basis of Murad’s statutory declaration, with Ahmad Zaki declaring that "almost every paragraph of Murad’s seven-page statutory declaration contained some information on corruption or corruption practices".
It is now more than eight months since the establishment of the special ACA team to investigate into Murad’s allegations against Anwar, and the ACA should report to Parliament next week on progress made with regard to the allegations that Anwar Ibrahim had amassed a fortune of RM3 billion while in government through 20 "Master Accounts".
If the ACA had not made any progress whatsoever, then it is time Ahmad Zaki start redeeming the image, credibility and integrity of the ACA and do justice to Anwar by openly clearing the former Deputy Prime Minister of Murad’s allegations.
If Ahmad Zaki is not prepared either to report to Parliament on progress made in the investitgations or clear Anwar of Murad’s allegations of having amassed RM3 billion through 20 "Masterr Accounts", then the ACA director-general should be censured in Parliament for compromising the credibility, independence and integrity of the ACA by allowing himself to be made a political tool of the ruling parties.
(8/7/2000)