Good Thing Latheefa Led Macc For Only 9 Months Puad Says

---

Umno supreme council member Puad Zarkashi dismissed Latheefa Koya’s comments, saying she headed the MACC for only nine months.
ADS“Fortunately, it wasn’t long. I fear there would have been a lot more damage,” he said in a Facebook post yesterday.
He claimed that she empowered selective prosecutions the 1MDB case against Mas Ermieyati Samsudin was dropped but the prosecution of Ahmad Maslan and Shahrir Samad continued.
This was in response to Latheefa challenging Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to secure his predecessor Najib Abdul Razak’s release from prison.
Then-MACC chief commissioner Latheefa KoyaShe made the call following Anwar’s claim in December last year that several high-profile prosecutions in 2018 were “rushed” and tainted by “venom and enmity”.
She served as the MACC chief commissioner between June 2019 and March 2020.
After claims that MACC dropped Mas Ermieyati from its list of individuals and entities issued compounds for allegedly receiving monies from 1MDB, Latheefa said the graftbusters were prioritising those who allegedly received big sums of money from the sovereign wealth fund.
Meanwhile, Puad said Latheefa should never have been the MACC chief commissioner as she was in PKR at the time, contradicting the party’s stance on political appointments.
“She didn’t even have experience. She could get caught up in party emotions, revenge, and partisanship,” he said.
Audio clips released
The Umno leader questioned her release of audio clips containing conversations between Najib and Rosmah Mansor before the 1MDB trial.
“Was it professional or revenge to embarrass?” he asked.
In 2020, then-law minister Takiyuddin Hassan said the clips were released legitimately according to the MACC’s discretionary powers.
Latheefa had released nine audio clips implicating Najib, his wife Rosmah, former MACC chief commissioner Dzulkifli Ahmad, as well as a member of the Abu Dhabi royalty, Khaldoon Khalifa Al-Mubarak, who is sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Development Company’s chief executive officer.
Several other phone conversations released also appeared to discuss investigations into the 1MDB scandal.
Latheefa had claimed the audio recordings came to MACC anonymously. She said the leak in information between Najib and Dzulkifli showed a conspiracy at the highest level of the BN government at the time. - Mkini

---