Khalid Cites Ex-MACC Chief For Contempt Of Court
KUALA LUMPUR: Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim today filed contempt proceedings against Datuk Seri Ahmad Said Hamdan, accusing the former anti-corruption chief of defying a court ruling over remarks the latter made in 2009 surrounding a corruption probe on the Selangor menteri besar.
Khalid had last month settled his defamation suit against the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and its former chief Ahmad Said (pic) but both defendants in the case had failed to adhere to the court’s order that they place front-page apologies to the Selangor Menteri Besar in two mainstream dailies – The Star and New Straits Times.
Following this, the PKR leader, through his lawyer Sankara Nair, filed an ex-parte application for leave to cite Ahmad Said and the Malaysian government for contempt of court at the High Court registry this morning.
In his supporting affidavit, Khalid pointed out that it was not a legal impossibility for the defendants to publish their apologies in the two newspapers.
“It is not a legal impossibility, they have done it before, they can do it and they didn’t do it,” Sankara told reporters here.
Khalid had filed the defamation suit on April 27, 2009 over Ahmad Said’s remarks on February 20 the same year, which were reported by the media, saying that the MACC had “strong evidence” of Khalid’s misuse of government funds for the maintenance of his personal car and the purchase of 46 sacrificial cows costing RM10,400 for a Muslim celebration in 2008.
On March 18, Ahmad Hamdan and the anti-graft body had both been ordered by High Court judge, Datuk Lau Bee Lan, to apologize in open court and to publish their apology on the front page of two English-language papers, the New Straits Times and The Star within four days of the order.
While Ahmad Hamdan had made his apology in open court on March 19, the former MACC chief commissioner had yet to publish his apology in the two dailies as ordered by the court despite the four-day deadline having lapsed.
When reading out his open apology to court on March 19, Ahmad Hamdan had said, “I, Datuk Seri Panglima Ahmad Said bin Hamdan, sincerely apologize to Tan Sri Khalid bin Ibrahim, over my statement on February 21, 2009, that was published by the media.
“The statement was made in my capacity as MACC chief at the time. It was made in response to a question that was asked of me by media representatives about the progress of MACC’s investigations on Abdul Khalid,” he added.
“I made the statement without any ill-intentions and without any intention to jeopardize the reputation, image and integrity of the plaintiff.”
The MACC later cleared Khalid of the allegations in February 2010 and the menteri besar was never charged.
Explaining today, Sankara said on March 26th, three days after the deadline for the apology, his office received a letter from the Attorney-General’s Chambers with an application to vary the court’s order and to seek an extension of the deadline.
The lawyer added that this came although he had complied with the defendants’ earlier complaint that they had not received a sealed order from the court’s decision on the case a day earlier.
He said he had even served the sealed order on the defendants on March 25, allowing them a two-day extension to the original March 23 deadline for the apology.
“So they should have complied by March 28… but even then, they did not,” Sankara said.
The lawyer added that he had also filed an affidavit in reply today to the application from the AGC to extend the deadline and vary the court’s order.
“What they were asking for was an extension of time because it was impossible to meet the timeframe… and secondly, they wanted to vary the order because it should not be on the frontpage of the papers – it should be in any page,” he said.
But Sankara explained in the affidavit that the defendants had already consented to the court’s order previously and should have objected before the court at the time when the decision was made.
He insisted that the court’s order was “legally possible” on two grounds – that both The Star and NST are government-controlled and that in a separate case on September 4, 1998, the government published former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan’s affidavit in the front page of all major newspapers.
“So clearly, they could have done it, they must do it, they must comply… it is no respect to the court.
“Therefore, I had to file the application to cite them for contempt,” Sankara said.