KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 — Datuk Seri Gopal Sri Ram said today he did not wish to respond to former attorney general Tan Sri Apandi Ali’s assertion yesterday that the ex-Federal Court judge sought to have him arrest Datuk Seri Najib Razak in 2018.
Apandi, a fellow former judge, asserted that Sri Ram had visited him at his home before the general election in 2018 and allegedly urged him to have then-prime minister Najib arrested.
“I decline to comment,” Sri Ram was quoted as saying by The Star Online today.
Apandi described his account as an excerpt of his soon-to-be-released memoirs.
In his excerpt, Apandi asserted that Sri Ram visited him in January 2018 to appeal for an unnamed law firm’s bank accounts to be unfrozen, before revealing that he allegedly went there at the behest of former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
The ex-AG further asserted that Sri Ram then urged him to order Najib’s arrest the next day but could not provide grounds for this beyond saying that Apandi would be seen as a national hero as the PM at the time was universally disliked by Malaysians.
Apandi has invited Sri Ram to dispute this version of the meeting but suggested that there was at least video recordings of the visit by pointing out his home at the time was equipped with surveillance cameras, notably in the living room where the exchange purportedly took place.
He said that there were also witnesses to Sri Ram’s visit, including officers in the security detail assigned to him by the Royal Malaysia Police at the time.
Apandi became the AG in 2015 during the Najib administration but was removed in 2018 after Pakatan Harapan won the general election.
