Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief commissioner Latheefa Koya should be commended for her quick response to the news report on corruption allegations implicating Airbus and two “executives” of AirAsia.
According to Latheefa, MACC has contacted the authorities in the United Kingdom and initiated an investigation of its own. The allegations are indeed grave and warrant an investigation by MACC.
But, on a side note, since MACC is already in touch with presumably the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO), perhaps it can learn a thing or two from the latter.
According to its website, the SFO is a specialist prosecuting authority tackling the top level of serious or complex fraud, bribery and corruption. It is part of the UK criminal justice system covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The SFO takes on a small number of large economic crime cases. It may investigate any suspected offence which appears on reasonable grounds to involve serious or complex fraud and which warrants the application of the SFO’s specialist skills, powers and capabilities to investigate and prosecute.
The SFO calls itself “unusual in the UK” because it investigates and prosecutes its cases. It is so set up because the kinds of cases it investigates are complicated and lawyers and investigators need to work together from the beginning.
The organisational structure in which investigators and prosecutors work together from the start of a case is called the Roskill model. It is named after Lord Roskill, who chaired the independent Fraud Trials Committee (FTC) in 1983. This followed considerable public dissatisfaction during the 1970s and early 1980s with the UK system of investigating and prosecuting serious or complex fraud.
The FTC deliberated on more effective means of fighting fraud through changes to the law and to criminal proceedings. Its main recommendation was to set up a new organisation responsible for the detection, investigation and prosecution of serious fraud cases.
To give effect to the recommendations of the FTC, the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) 1987 was enacted, which created the SFO. Interestingly, the CJA empowers the UK attorney-general to appoint the director of the SFO who “shall discharge his functions under the superintendence of the attorney-general”. The superintendence is now in accordance with a protocol.
The Roskill model has become the structure adopted for the SFO. Under its organisational structure, the SFO has a strong workforce of investigators, lawyers, forensic accountants, analysts, digital forensics experts and a variety of other people in specialist and support roles.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the SFO’s investigations on Airbus, which spanned across four countries in Asia – Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan – should lead to an indictment being laid before the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court in England and Wales, which is equivalent to the Malaysian High Court.
It is something for MACC to ponder.
Hafiz Hassan is an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.