KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 — Only the judiciary has authority to evaluate alleged breaches of ethics involving Datuk Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali, the trial judge in ex-prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s SRC case, said Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said today.
In a statement responding to reports of her letter to Shafee & Co who represented Najib in the case, the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reforms) said the federal government abided by this principle as well as the separation of powers doctrine.
Under the doctrine, the three branches of government — the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary — each exercise their powers independently.
“As I have emphasised previously in the Dewan Rakyat, any matters regarding this are under the judiciary’s jurisdiction. The government always respects and continues to hold on to the principle of the doctrine of separation of powers,” she concluded in a statement today.
Earlier in the statement, Azalina referred to her previous parliamentary reply on February 23 to oral questions by Tenggara MP Manndzri Nasib and Tasek Gelugor MP Datuk Wan Saiful Wan Jan.
The two MPs had wanted to know about a purported leak of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) investigation on Nazlan’s case and the outcome of the investigation.
Azalina today said her letter to the law firm was a reiteration of the reply saying the MACC informed her in February 21 letter that it had submitted to the chief justice its report alleging Nazlan had breached the Judges’ Code of Ethics 2009.
The minister said she also told Parliament at the time that the matter was exclusively the chief justice’s purview, in line with Article 125(3) and Article 125(3A) of the Federal Constitution.
The two articles empower the chief justice to decide — if a judge has breached the code of ethics —whether to refer such a judge to a body formed under federal law to handle such a breach or to a tribunal instead.
It is unclear why the MACC, a body which comes under the executive branch of government and which usually investigates corruption complaints, was submitting a report regarding alleged breach of code of ethics for judges to the chief justice.
As for a letter by Azalina to the law firm representing Najib in his criminal trials, Azalina said this was in reply to the law firm’s letter to her and that it was based on her previous answer in the Dewan Rakyat.
“My reply to the Shafee & Co letter is in line with my answer in the Dewan Rakyat and the facts which were made known to me regarding this matter in carrying out my responsibilities as a member of the administration to Parliament.
“I have also asked that Shafee & Co present its application officially and directly to the MACC if it intends to obtain the outcome of MACC’s investigation regarding this matter,” she said.
Earlier today, Malay Mail sighted a March 20 letter from Azalina to Shafee & Co’s Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, with the letter being a reply to an earlier March 15 letter from Shafee which requested to find out what the MACC had said regarding its probe on Nazlan.
In that March 20 letter by Azalina, she mentioned the February 21 letter to her from the MACC and the MACC’s submitting of its report on the same day to the chief justice, and added that the letter did not include MACC’s comments on the investigation on Nazlan and did not come with the MACC’s investigation outcome.
In that same letter, Azalina said she had on March 7 received the MACC’s report dated February 20 on its outcome on its investigation on Nazlan.
While Shafee had asked Azalina for a copy of the MACC’s investigation report on Nazlan, Azalina replied in the letter that he should ask the MACC directly as it has been classified as “Sulit” or confidential by the MACC.
Malay Mail had obtained a confirmation from Azalina’s office earlier today that the March 20 letter — which was sent to Azalina’s office this morning by news portal FreeMalaysiaToday — is “legitimate”, with the office also saying this letter of Azalina’s was a response to a letter sent by Shafee & Co to her.
When contacted earlier, a lawyer from Shafee & Co declined to share Shafee’s March 15 letter, but confirmed the existence of that March 15 letter and authenticated the contents of Azalina’s letter.
“We are unaware and as to how these letters have made it into the public domain. But they are in any case authentic,” the lawyer from Shafee & Co told Malay Mail.
Ever since Mohd Nazlan convicted Najib over the misappropriation of RM42 million of government-owned firm SRC International Sdn Bhd’s funds, the judge has been made the target of attacks — especially online attacks — which have been aiming to sling mud and cast doubt on his decision to convict Najib.
Najib’s conviction has however been upheld by both the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court, and the former prime minister last Friday lost his latest bid to challenge his conviction when the Federal Court in a 4-1 decision rejected his review bid.
One of the repeated points of attack made against Mohd Nazlan has been his previous job and positions in Maybank before he became a job, but such information was publicly available even before he started hearing Najib’s SRC trial.
Najib has so far served more than seven months of his 12-year jail sentence in the SRC case, and currently remains a prisoner.
