MALAYSIAN Anti-Corruption Commission chief Mohd Shukri Abdull had it all planned out on May 14.

He wanted to tell Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad that he did not want the job as he was happy with life after retirement. But, that went down the drain the moment Dr Mahathir looked at him in the eye and said: “Do you accept my offer? You start tomorrow.”

“I was the first to meet him. There was (former MACC deputy chief and current Immigration Department director-general) Mustafar Ali, too,” said Shukri.

“I really did not want the job. I am a retiree. I have a granddaughter, and I love her very much. We had made plans. I would reject (the offer). Mustafar, too.”

However, he said, it was difficult for him to say “no” after Dr Mahathir posed the question.

“Especially in front of a man who is a 92-year-old, but still has the vigour to work. I told him I would come back on one condition, that is, just to finish off the task that I was unable to finish before my retirement.”

He said the task he faces is a tough one, and that he is not particularly happy to “return home”.

“‘Are you happy to come back to work?’ the reporter asked me. To be honest, I am not happy, but I am doing this for the country.

“If you know about my experience, I almost died. I am afraid to come back, to be honest,” he said during a press conference at the MACC headquarters today.

In an explosive tell-all, he told reporters about what he faced during the investigation into SRC International, a subsidiary of 1Malaysia Development Bhd, in 2015, including the threats issued against him and his men in attempts to stop the probe.

He said a live bullet was sent to his home, and that he had kept this a secret so as to not worry his family and MACC officers involved in the investigation. – May 22, 2018.