{"id":13316,"date":"2022-02-16T22:10:34","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T14:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?p=13316"},"modified":"2022-02-16T22:10:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T14:10:35","slug":"whistleblower-lalitha-untrustworthy-says-macc-chief-azam-baki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?p=13316","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblower Lalitha \u2018untrustworthy\u2019, says MACC chief Azam Baki"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kuala Lumpur, Feb 16 — Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief commissioner Azam Baki has described Lalitha Kunaratnam, a researcher linked to C4, as an untrustworthy person and not an investigative journalist as she claims to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azam, in his reply to Lalitha\u2019s statement of defense against his defamation suit filed through Messrs Ibrahim & Fuaadah today, also questioned her claim that she had a good working relationship with him and MACC staff members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azam said if this was at all true, it should have made it easier for Lalitha to seek confirmation from him before publishing defamatory articles and tweets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInstead, the defendant (Lalitha) had written, published, and re-published the articles and tweets without first obtaining confirmation and feedback from me.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lalitha\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe defense statement here clearly intends to mislead the court by claiming that she purportedly had a close working relationship with me and my staff when in fact the MACC and I have never had any personal contact with her,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azam said the defendant also did not provide the contact details of her alleged informant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs an \u2018investigative journalist\u2019, it is a basic requirement for her to get the full details or at least the full name of the MACC officer identified as \u2018Hong\u2019 and the number of the informant given by the authorities (as claimed in her statement of defense),\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lalitha\u2019s counsel, Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamad, when contacted by reporters, said case management for the suit has been fixed for March 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Jan 12, Azam, 59, filed a suit against Lalitha for allegedly publishing defamatory articles related to the purchase of shares in the Independent News Service (INS) news agency portal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azam\u2019s statement of claim said the defendant had written two articles titled \u201cBusiness Ties Among MACC Leadership: How Deep Does It Go? (Part 1)\u201d and \u201cBusiness Ties Among MACC Leadership: How Deep Does It Go? (Part Two)\u201d published in INS on Oct 26 and republished on Dec 15 last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also claimed that the defendant had shared links to the articles on her Twitter account @LalithaVelvet that were still accessible at the time the suit was filed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azam claimed that the articles were sensational, scandalous, and offensive and were written and republished with malicious intent to give a bad perception to readers that the plaintiff was a corrupt civil servant or one who had abused his position as a senior MACC official for his or his sibling\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Lalitha through her statement of defense filed on Feb 3 claimed that the contents of the article and her tweets involving Azam were obtained from legitimate sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NMT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kuala Lumpur, Feb 16 — Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief commissioner Azam Baki has described…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-local"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53-300x164.png",300,164,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Screen-Shot-2021-10-01-at-11.36.53.png",590,322,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"Crime<\/a> Local<\/a>","tag_info":"Local","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13317,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13316\/revisions\/13317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}