Malaysia's rejection of Switzerland's request for mutual legal assistance (MLA) for their investigations into money-laundering linked to 1MDB only arouses suspicion of a cover-up, said a prominent lawyer.

Lawyer Mohd Haniff Khatri Abdulla said this is because the Attorney-General's Chamber's reason for denying the requiest as reported in UK's Financial Times (FT) yesterday does not hold water.

FT quoted the AG's Chambers as saying they were unable to fulfil the request as it would "prejudice a criminal matter in Malaysia".

Haniff, who is former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's lawyer, said if this were true, then the same would apply in the case of mutual assistance among different agencies within Malaysia.

He said the argument then would go against the rationale of setting up a special task force comprising different government agencies, as it would interfere with investigations as claimed.

"Fact is, interference or prejudice of investigations would not arise at all for any country that conducts its cooperation in criminal investigations among various agencies in a professional manner," said Haniff in a statement today.

'Deliberate delays?'

Haniff further asked why criminal investigations as cited by the AG's Chambers is being attended to by the local authorities, has the probe not been completed since 2014 till today, "that is nearly two years".

"In addition, the two applications by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to initiate MLA with other countries has also been rejected by the (Malaysian) AG, hence this means there is no further investigation in the view of the AG that needs to be completed by getting information from abroad, therefore shouldn't the local authorities be able to complete the investigations?" he asked.

"The inference that one can make is that the government is deliberately delaying the investigations by choice," said Haniff.

He asked if announcements from time to time that investigations have still not completed, could actually be meant as an excuse to avoid accepting foreign requests for MLA as seen in the Swiss case.

He said the government has given many reasons not to investigate various aspects of the 1MDB scandal, such as the US Department of Justice (DOJ) forfeiture suits being a "civil matter".

"Fact is, local authorities are deliberately shutting off their minds and room for the investigations to be completed," said Haniff.

He asked if all this is being done to avoid exposing the wrongdoers in the 1MDB scandal.

Yesterday Swiss attorney-general Michael Lauber told FT that Malaysia has rejected their MLA request.

This was their second request to Malaysia, after the AG's Chambers claimed it had not received the first application.

Investigations linked to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's pet project, the debt-ridden Finance Ministry fund 1MDB, are under way in a number of countries worldwide including the US, Switzerland and Singapore.

The AG has cleared Najib of any wrongdoing.