Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Pesky French Lawyer Seeks to Return to KL




Sub scandal lawyer, booted out in 2011, scheduled by opposition to address parliament
French lawyer William Bourdon, the leader of an investigation into a long-running scandal involving €150 million in kickbacks over the sale of submarines to the Malaysian defense ministry, was due to land in Kuala Lumpur today to testify on the probe before the Dewan Rakyat, or house of parliament.

It was questionable, however, whether Bourdon would be allowed into the country. He was unceremoniously bundled out by authorities in July of 2011 after giving details of the alleged scandal in a speech in Penang to hundreds of people at a fundraiser to continue his investigation. Bourdon was taken off a flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by immigration officials and was put on another plane out of the country over his protests. 

Bourdon and his team, who had been hired to by Suaram to look into the scandal in dissatisfaction over the government’s investigation of the 2006 murder for hire of the Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaariibuu, were asked by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim to answer questions in parliament tomorrow about the affair. 

Bourdon and Suaram have been battered by both the mainstream press, which is largely government-owned, and an army of bloggers who say the scandal has been overblown and that no trial had been ordered by French authorities. Neither Bourdon, Suaram nor Asia Sentinel, which has reported extensively on the case, have ever said a trial was imminent. But the investigation is continuing and investigating magistrates have been appointed by the French courts. 

As Asia Sentinel reported in June 2012, French police acting on a request from Bourdon’s legal team raided the headquarters of the state-owned defense giant DCN and its subsidiaries and came up with a wealth of detail that enmeshed former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, current Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and a host of others in the scandal, as well as top officials with DCN. Read more.

1 comment:

Purple Haze said...

Recent "regret" by the middleman Deepak in the Bala SD case seems to indicate that there may be some element of truth the involvement of parties that were named in Bala's SD.

We shall have to wait and see, of course as this would have relevance to the Scorpene case.