When de facto law minister Rais Yatim announced o­n March 27 in Parliament of yet another foreign country (Japan this time) obstructing the criminal investigations of the Perwaja Steel scandal, many members of Parliament must have chuckled. Yes, chuckling at the limitless ingenuity of the ruling party Barisan Nasional (BN) in taking the nation o­n an endless chase known as the Perwaja merry-go-round.

Mind you, this is no ordinary scandal. It is the most sensational and the greatest financial scandal in our history, causing a dent to the national coffer well in excess of RM10,000 million ringgit (or RM 2,000 per family in this country), accumulated by Perwaja over many years of gross mismanagement and frauds.

MPs may feel amused and disgusted at the latest excuse offered by the BN government to drag its feet over this investigation, but o­ne person who certainly could not feel any amusement but o­nly bitterness is former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim. For it was he who ordered (as finance minister and chairperson of the cabinet management committee in charge of discipline) for a probe o­n this scandal when it first surfaced seven years ago.

However, the great irony is that he who orders for a clean-up of the greatest corruption mess of all is now serving a jail sentence o­n 'corruption' charges, for which he has neither pocketed a single cent, nor gained any other material benefit.

And yet, the greatest joke is that Anwar has now almost completed serving his six-year 'corruption' sentence (completing o­n April 13, 2003, with remission) while the BN government is still merrily chasing the ever elusive culprits not a single o­ne has been caught out of possibly hundreds of frauds which eventually gobbled up a mountain of cash over the years, as judged by the monumental size of the total loss.

As for the Perwaja merry-go-round, readers will recall that in the early years of investigations, the government exonerated its failure to produce results by lamenting o­n the difficulties in securing co-operation from foreign countries, notably Japan and Hong Kong. In later years, it shifted the blame squarely o­n the Swiss government, pin-pointing the strict Swiss banking secrecy laws as the stumbling block.

As late as February 2002, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was still singing the tune of the great Swiss barrier as blocking investigations, during a dialogue session with Malaysian students in London. However, this time the Swiss authorities strongly rebutted Mahathir's allegations, pointing out that details of the slush accounts in Switzerland had been forwarded to the Malaysian authority as early as May 2001, as the Swiss authority had "responded to all Malaysian requests in a fast and uncomplicated manner".

The final nail o­n the government's persistent lies o­n the Swiss banking secrecy laws was driven when none other than the Swiss President Kasper Villiger himself revealed the truth in a joint press conference with Mahathir o­n June 10, 2002, when the latter visited Switzerland.

Villiger disclosed that the Swiss banking secrecy law had been amended as early as 30 years ago to exclude its coverage over funds accrued through corruption and other illegal means, and as such he categorically stated that the Swiss authority had not hindered any Malaysian effort to investigate the illegal funds in Switzerland siphoned from Perwaja Steel.

And now, o­ne year after having lost the Swiss as the scapegoat, Rais wants us to believe that the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) is still unable to complete its works because it is facing yet another "foreign obstacle".

By naming Japan as the new hindrance, does Rais realise that the BN government, after taking Malaysians o­n a joy ride for seven years, has now brought us back to square o­ne? And does he also realise that while the BN government may not mind continuing to entertain Malaysians with another round of such joy ride, Malaysians may be tired of it?

In particular, Rais' claim of ignorance as to whether the existing law had hindered investigations in Japan is most laughable, as such simple information should have been known within days of starting the investigation. To claim such ignorance after seven years of investigations reflect either dishonesty or hopeless inefficiency o­n the part of BN.

That the BN leadership has absolutely no intention to open the lid o­n the Pandora's box known as the Perwaja scandal is self-evident from the fact that it has steadfastly refused to publicly touch o­n any issue other than the RM 76 million fund illegally siphoned off from Perwaja. It was mainly o­n this single issue that the ACA has been going o­n a wild goose chase around the world from Japan to Hong Kong to Switzerland and now back to

Japan.

The RM 76 million slush fund constitutes o­nly a minute portion (less than o­ne percent) of the total write-off the taxpayers will have to eventually sustain for this grand scam. What about the many other frauds and misdeeds committed over many years of mismanagement, in particular during the eight years of fraudulent management under Perwaja CEO Eric Chia , a Mahathir confidante appointed in 1988 to supposedly turn Perwaja around into a profit-making concern?

Mahathir himself admitted to mismanagement and misdeeds as the cause of Perwaja's colossal losses during the said dialogue with Malaysian students in London in February 2002. There must be many cases worthy of criminal investigations, for which no cooperation from foreign countries are needed. Why hasn't the government cracked open a single such case during seven long years of investigation by an ACA which is staffed by the thousands?

It must be obvious that the wild goose chasing of a single issue all these years is a deliberate strategy by the BN leadership to achieve the dual purpose of prolonging the investigations as well as to hoodwink the public into thinking that the RM 76 million slush fund is about all there is to the entire scandal. Thanks to the cooperation and collusion of the local media, all of which are subservient to BN, the latter seems to have largely succeeded in achieving this objective.

This will of course facilitate the government closing the book o­n the entire scandal when eventually the slush fund issue extinguishes in a whimper, with or without a culprit, which is the modus operandi for all corruption scandals involving senior BN politicians, the latest such examples being the closing of corruption cases o­n International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz and former Melaka menteri besar Rahim Thamby Chik.

The lack of publicity in the mass media should not be allowed to mask the great significance of this scandal. Apart from the enormity of the case in terms of quantum and longevity, the Mahathir himself has been accused as the boss behind the villain. In a police report o­n July 22, 1999 (No.19625/1999), Anwar explicitly charged that Mahathir was the ultimate culprit of this grand scam. Part of this report reads:

"Eric Chia in fact repeatedly claimed that his actions had the support and under the direction of the Prime Minister Dato Seri Dr Mahathir. And this is further substantiated with letters written by the prime minister himself. With the so-called mandate, the Board was sidelined, tender procedures were blatantly ignored and there were questionable, 'unsatisfactory' payments made to certain parties."

The prime minister has not denied the charges, neither has he taken any legal action to protect his reputation. Understandably, none of the law-enforcing agencies such as the police, ACA or AG is known to have acted o­n this police report.

This conspiracy of silence speaks volumes as to the truth or falsity of Anwar's accusation. It also explains why the ACA has been galloping around the globe all these years and always ending up empty-handed.

While the silence of the law enforcing agencies is understandable, considering the state (or lack) of the rule of law in this country, the lack of firepower by opposition MPs to pin the prime minister down o­n this issue in the current parliamentary session is not readily understandable. Or are our MPs, like many other Malaysians, so impressed by the PM's apparent new status as a world leader of the oppressed that they think they shouldn't bother the PM at this time with such embarrassing questions as those relating to his dubious role in the Perwaja scam?

While many Malaysians may be beaming with pride at the PM ascending the international stage fighting against all kinds of justices and evils in this world including violation of human rights and corruption, there are other Malaysians who hope that in his busy schedule defending the oppressed world against greedy capitalists and evil imperialists and colonialists, he could spare some time for his own people.

For instance, he could clean up his own backyard by weeding out corruption for which he has to start by making a clean breast of his involvement in the Perwaja scandal, or he could restore justice to this country. These measures would certainly make Malaysia a more comfortable place to live in.

Better still, if he could tone down his limelight-hogging activities such as the recent extravaganza known as the Non-Aligned Movement meeting, thus sparing his cash-strapped taxpayers from having to pick up the many expensive bills that amount to hundreds of millions of ringgit.