RESEARCHER Lalitha Kunaratnam, who wrote exposés on Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief Azam Baki, has been accused of lying to the court over her job affiliation with an anti-graft watchdog group.

An MACC officer lodged a police report against her on the matter yesterday, at the Sentul police station, according to Free Malaysia Today.

Lalitha is alleged to have made a false claim about her status as a researcher with the Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4) when she wrote this in her statement of defence in response to a defamation suit filed by Azam against her.

Azam is suing her over the articles she wrote over his corporate shares ownership and business links through family members.

According to FMT’s report, the MACC officer who lodged the police report is accusing Lalitha of lying in her statement of defence based on C4’s own press statement last month.

In its clarification, C4 said Lalitha had ceased being an employee of the civil society group since December 2020 and had been carrying out her work as an independent journalist and consultant.

Lalitha’s statement of defence in response to Azam’s lawsuit was made on February 3.

Azam had initiated legal proceedings early last month, amid pressure on him to come clean or step down from the top post at MACC after Lalitha’s allegations over his corporate shares ownership.

Lalitha is facing other probes under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (CMA) and the penal code for publishing statements “conducing to public mischief”.

Her two-part article about Azam, titled “Business Ties Among MACC Leadership: How Deep Does It Go?”, was published online last year.

The contents of her article were also used by former MACC consultation and corruption prevention panel member, Dr Edmund Terence Gomez, in trying to get his superiors to take action over the claims against Azam in order to safeguard MACC’s integrity.

In a press conference on January 5, Azam denied any wrongdoing, saying that his brother used his trading account to purchase the shares in two public-listed companies in 2015 and 2016, at which time he was MACC’s director of investigations.

The outcome of a Securities Commission (SC) probe into Azam was that he had full control of his trading account, effectively clearing him of any wrongdoing from a legal standpoint.

Calls for Azam’s resignation have continued from civil society and the opposition, however, as he is seen to have lied to the public about his brother’s use of his trading account. – February 10, 2022.