BALING MP Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim has brushed aside a pro-Umno blogger’s claim that he hoodwinked Mohamed Apandi Ali into believing he could get the attorney-general’s job for the latter.

The Umno Supreme Council member and Pilgrims’ Board chairman brushed aside request for a comment over Raja Petra Kamarudin’s article in the Malaysia Today blog alleging that Azeez wanted to control the A-G by making him believe that he got him the job.

“Wasting my time,” said Azeez at the Parliament lobby yesterday when asked to comment on the article.

Azeez walked away even as The Malaysian Insight asked him if he would sue the blogger.

Raja Petra in his articles, Strong rumours surrounding the AG: part 1 and part 2, published in the Malaysia Today blog two weeks ago, accused Azeez of wanting to curry favour with Apandi so that he can control the A-G and make a lot of money in influence-peddling when people want to make deals to settle cases.

Apandi dismissed the articles and lodged two police reports against the blogger and another report with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission against the Malaysia Today blog.

Police are investigating the reports for criminal defamation.

The A-G has also threatened to sue Raja Petra if he did not apologise.

Among the allegations that Raja Petra levelled against Apandi was that the A-G had demanded RM4 million from a Chinese businessman, identified as a “business partner” of the sultan of Johor, on a case he had won.

Raja Petra also wrote about a purported meeting in 2015 between senior judges – namely former chief justice Arifin Zakaria, Chief Justice Md Raus Shariff and Court of Appeal president Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudin – with a senior politician on an alleged plot to topple the government.

Apandi denied Raja Petra’s allegations of corruption and story about how he landed the A-G’s post in the article, adding he will sue Raja Petra “till kingdom come”.

Raja Petra is living in exile in the UK after fleeing sedition and criminal defamation charges in Malaysia in 2006 over a string of stories he published linking Prime Minister Najib Razak and wife, Rosmah Mansor, to the murder of Mongolian model and translator Altantuya Shaariibuu. – November 3, 2017.