Bala! Another case with No Further Action Taken!

There will be no further investigations on private investigator P. Balasubramaniam’s conflicting statutory declarations (SDs) as the case is now closed, according to the Attorney-General’s Chambers.

Defacto Law Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, in a written reply in Parliament, said that the A-G’s Chambers’ decision to close the case was because Balasubramaniam’s conflicting SDs did not affect the high-profile trial of murdered Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu. (That is the most lame reason I have ever heard!)

Under Section 199 of the Penal Code for providing “false statements.”, offenders are liable to a maximum jail term of three years and a fine.

“Although there are contradictions between the two SDS, the contradictions do not affect the outcome of the trial of Altantuya. Moreover, the individual (Balasubramaniam) is still believed to be abroad,” said Nazri.

The investigations against Balasubramaniam took place after he retracted a statutory declaration in July 2008, which implicated Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak and wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor in the murder of Altantuya.

Balasubramaniam, a private investigator hired by Abdul Razak Baginda, who was also Altantuya’s lover, has made many controversial allegations including linking Najib to Altantuya’s murder.

According to Bala’s lawyer Americk Sidhu, the Attorney-General's decision to close the file was aimed at halting embarrassing information from surfacing to implicate Nizam, Rosmah’s business associate Deepak Jaikishan and his brother and a police officer named Inspector Suresh.

This group is believed to have acted with the motive of trying to protect Najib, then the deputy prime minister, and destroy the credibility of the information contained in a previous statutory declaration.

“The A-G can't afford to investigate further as a whole can of worms would be opened up. That is the reason why he AG closed the file,” Americk told Malaysia Chronicle.

“Nothing is going to happen to the culprits because they are all sitting on the correct divide of the political fence. I don't think it is a good outcome. It is another attempt at sweeping stuff under the carpet again. This is something they are experts at.”

Powerful hands behind her killing

The murder of the beautiful 28-year old Altantuya, whom Bala had revealed in his first statutory declaration was Najib’s mistress before he passed her on to his close associate Razak Baginda, has gripped Malaysians for years now.

She was killed in a remote jungle clearing in Selangor in 2006 in a most horrific way. Despite telling her killers she was pregnant, two of Najib’s former bodyguards shot her in the head and blew her body with C4 explosives to prevent identification.

Months after the discovery of her body, rumors began circulating of powerful hands behind her killing. Altantuya, who speaks four languages including Russian and French, had played a role in helping Razak Baginda close a multi-billion ringgit submarines purchase for Najib, who was then the Defense minister.

Bala had been hired by Razak Baginda to stop Altantuya from harassing him for what she had said was her share of the submarines commission paid by French vendor DCNS. It amounted to US$500,000 while Baginda’s firm was allegedly benefitted with a 214 million euros side-deal.

In 2008, after harassment over his police statement which had contained some of these details, Bala decided to blow the whistle. With the help of his lawyers, he made a statutory declaration detailing all the information that had come to his hand while working for Baginda.

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