The Malaysian Insight

FORMER auditor-general Ambrin Buang today defended a National Audit Department employee’s decision to make an audio recording of a 2016 meeting of top government officials discussing ways to change an 1MDB audit report.

Ambrin was under cross-examination by Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, the lead counsel for former prime minister Najib Razak on trial for tampering with the 1MDB audit report at the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

Shafee asked Ambrin if Nor Salwani Muhammad had his permission to tape the meeting, to which Ambrin said she need not have it to do so.

Shafee then asked whether Nor Salwani should have asked permission from the meeting chairman, then chief secretary to the government Ali Hamsa, to which Ambrin replied: “If she was allowed to remain, there would have been no need for a tape recorder”.

Shafee: My question is, don’t you think it’s appropriate to ask the chairman, ‘Can I record the proceedings?’ as a matter of courtesy and appropriateness?

Ambrin: To me it is not necessary to ask permission because the whole intention is for her to take notes for our own use. 

Ambrin said he knew of the existence of the audio recording from investigators when he was questioned over the case late last year. Ambrin said it was only then that Nor Salwani told him “the whole story.”

Shafee: I suggest to you that it (the February 24 meeting) was recorded in a surreptitious fashion. They could have played the recording machine openly in front of everybody.  

Ambrin: I think the best thing was to have allowed her to attend the meeting.

Shafee: I am not blaming you. I blame everybody. Someone from your department could have said, I want my junior officer to record the meeting, get another seat. 

Ambrin: I didn’t expect her to be excluded.  

Nor Salwani testified in the trial last week that she had hastily placed an audio recorder in her colleague’s pencil case at the meeting after she was told to leave the room.

She denied any sinister motive on her part, saying she had made audio recordings of previous meetings as it was her job to take meeting minutes.

Prosecutors had played the audio recording in court which revealed the meeting attendees talking about removing portions of the 1MDB audit report and then destroying all copies of the original document. – November 28, 2019.