Is The Police Competent In Reading The Law?

Hantu Laut

The NFC debacle, is it morally wrong or criminally wrong?

As usual, Malaysian media only give a half full cup for the public to drink.Of course, if you don't ask the right questions you wouldn't get the right answers.

Like the smart reporter asking Wan Azizah whether she has Anwar's Omega watch which Azizah replied in the affirmative and next was her most terrifyingly stupid request "cuba tunjuk".No one in their right sense would think Azizah would be carrying the watch everwhere she goes, only that embarrassingly stupid reporter.

I have in my previous posts explicitly mentioned that Shahrizat should resign her ministerial position out of moral obligations.

Is the police competent in reading the law? Are they under public pressure to indict the directors of NFC or they do have a watertight case aginst them?

What is criminal breach of trust?

Section 405 of the Penal Code (Act 574) stated that:

405.Whoever, being in any manner entrusted with property, or with any dominion over property either solely or jointly with any other person dishonestly misappropriates, or converts to his own use, that property, or dishonestly uses or disposes of that property in violation of any direction of law prescribing the mode in which such trust is to be discharged, or of any legal contract, express or implied, which he has made touching the discharge of such trust, or wilfully suffers any other person so to do, commits “criminal breach of trust”.

The punishments under the law came under Section 406 to 409:

406. Whoever commits criminal breach of trust shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than one year and not more than ten years and with whipping, and shall also be liable to fine.

As always Mat Zain is all pumped up to grind his axe against the AG. He may be wrong here when he asserted Section 409 is the charge applicable to the directors of NFC.Unless, they are considered civil servants or agents the charge should be under Section 406.If the case is thrown out there would be many poison arrows flying toward the AG.

Section 409 below:

409. Whoever, being in any manner entrusted with property, or with any dominion over property, in his capacity of a public servant or an agent, commits criminal breach of trust in respect of that property, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than two years and not more than twenty years and with whipping, and shall also be liable to fine.

If they are considered as civil servants, which I doubt, or as agents which is possible than Mat Zain may be right in his assumption.

Needless to say, the directors of NFC had strayed away from the main objective of the soft loan given to them.The lack of due diligence by all parties concerned may be the cause of this debacle.In the first place the loan should not have been given to a non-GLC entity.Soft loan of this nature should only be approved to GLCs, where the government has complete control over the company.

Having not seen the terms and conditions of the loan agreement and the books of NFC it would be unwise to speculate.

Only the AG can determine whether there is watertight case against the directors of NFC.