Report: Malaysian Bar defends objection to MACC investigations of judges

KUALA LUMPUR, April 20 — The Malaysian Bar president has explained its objection to an investigation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) against a sitting superior court judge, despite having called for a probe against a former chief justice for alleged misconduct in the past.

Its president Karen Cheah Yee Lynn said the Federal Constitution was amended in 2009 and 2010, which outlined the process in lodging complaints against the judiciary, news portal Free Malaysia Today reported this morning.

“The mechanism to lodge complaints in 1996 was different then. That’s why [the stance taken] is completely different for this case.

“We now have a new regime and process for this kind of complaint to be managed by the right party, and in this case it [the right party] should be the chief justice,” she was quoted as saying during a public forum here organised by the Bar Council titled “The MACC, the Ex-PM and the Independence of the Judiciary” yesterday.

In an interview with the New Straits Times published today, MACC chief Tan Sri Azam Baki chided the Malaysian Bar for suggesting that the commission has no authority to investigate Court of Appeal judge Datuk Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali.

Azam told the newspaper that critics of the MACC should stop practising double standards, saying that it was the Malaysian Bar that had pushed the Anti-Corruption Agency — which was the predecessor to the commission — to investigate judges.

Before his elevation, Mohd Nazlan had been the trial judge in the High Court that convicted former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak of embezzling RM42 million belonging to state-owned SRC International Sdn Bhd.

On April 3, Cheah said the MACC does not have the powers to investigate alleged breaches of judicial ethics and that any such investigation amounts to an interference with the administration of justice, as it should be the role of the Judicial Ethics Committee instead to investigate and decide the ethical conduct of judges.

With the Court of Appeal and Federal Court having upheld Najib’s SRC conviction at the High Court, Cheah said the attempt to raise allegations against the SRC trial judge using the MACC’s purported letter to the chief justice was a “desperate” move to tarnish the reputation of a judge who had already been vindicated at all levels within the judiciary, further calling for a stop to this “inappropriate and last-ditch effort to cast doubts on Najib’s conviction”.