Copy & Posted By mahi on Dec 23, 2011

Khir Toyo gets 1 year jail for graft

SHAH ALAM: FORMER SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR DR MOHD KHIR TOYO WAS FOUND GUILTY BY THE HIGH COURT HERE FRIDAY OF KNOWINGLY PURCHASING TWO PIECES OF LAND AND A BUNGALOW IN SECTION 7 AT A MUCH LOWER PRICE THAN ITS ORIGINAL VALUE FROM DITAMAS SDN BHD DIRECTOR SHAMSUDDIN HAYRONI IN 2007.

He was sentenced to one year in jail from Friday and Justice Mohtarudin Baki ordered his land and bungalow be forfeited.

However, the judge granted him him a stay of execution of jail time and forfeiture of the properties pending an appeal after his lawyer M. Athimulan made the request.

The properties involved were purchased at RM3.5mil although Ditamas had bought it for RM6.5mil on Dec 23, 2004."

First of all, the Judiciary certainly seems to be independent. The Court has convicted Khir Toyo a former Menteri Besar and still influential UMNO politician. Recently, the Court also ruled a libel suit in favour of Opposition Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and ordered UMNO owned Utusan Malaysia to pay Lim RM200,000 in damages. I dont think Khir Toyo and his many supporters or Utusan Malaysia will be demonstrating in the streets against the Court rulings. Lets learn to obey the Law.

I also hope that this conviction is a herald of more actions that will be successfully undertaken by the MACC against corrupt people where ever and who ever they are. We have to go after the Big Fish.

Knowing more now about how the law really works, this is also easier said than done. Investigating corruption and gathering evidence is one thing, assembling the evidence to make it cogent (for presentation in Court) is another thing. Then having the defense lawyers tear the evidence to pieces is something else. Finally the Judge must be convinced enough to convict the accused. So there are many milestones.

The record of successful convictions of corruption cases should be a lot better. Do you know that statistically there are some judges who have acquitted corruption cases more often than convicted them? Obviously their standards of proof are much stricter. I have heard that the Singapore Courts for example have a higher record of convictions of corruption cases based on levels of evidence that would not be dissimilar to that presented in our Malaysian Court. If so, we have to ask why that is the case?

Anyway congratulations and more encouragement are due to the MACC officers who handled the Khir Toyo case successfully.

It is also a lesson and a warning to all Big Fish politicians, office bearers, cronies and corporate thieves - if you do wrong, the Law will visit itself upon you. It may take a while, but eventually it will come around to you. And here is the more painful lesson from the Khir Toyo case :

"He was sentenced to one year in jail from Friday and Justice Mohtarudin Baki ordered his land and bungalow be forfeited."

Not only is there a jail sentence but his land and bungalow will be forfeited. So your money, your assets, properties that were ill gotten can be forfeited. Even if you have transferred it to your wives, children, siblings, cousins, in laws etc - if at the material time the asset was acquired criminally or using ill gotten means - then it can still be forfeited. So it makes no difference whether you transfer the property into your wives name, childrens name, nana's name or whoever. If you did the crime, you will do the time. Plus you will lose the property. And you will suffer shame.

I also hope that this Khir Toyo conviction will help improve our standing in the corruption indices where we have recently slipped a notch or two. What the public really wants to see is more blood - we need to see more Big Fish or 'Big Lembu' brought to Court and convicted for their wrong doing. Well folks its lunch time. No 'lembu' today - I am having egg, tomato and wheat bread sandwich.

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