'Slander!': Arifin lodges police report over Mkini's 'settlement' article

Summary

• Musa Aman’s son-in-law Mohd Arifin Arif files a police report claiming he was slandered following Malaysiakini’s report that he allegedly attempted to broker a deal to resolve the corruption scandal in Sabah.

• Arifin denounces the allegations as misleading and vows legal action, claiming Malaysiakini failed to verify the claims before publishing despite the news portal’s attempts to reach him.

Membakut assemblyperson Mohd Arifin Arif has lodged a police report claiming that he has been slandered.

This followed Malaysiakini’s report on Monday where a whistleblower claimed Arifin attempted to broker a deal to “settle” the corruption scandal involving several assemblypersons in the state.

According to Daily Express, the report was lodged at the Kota Kinabalu police headquarters this evening. It also published a video where Arifin read out a statement denouncing the allegations as “inaccurate, misleading, and contains facts that are wrong and slanderous”.

“Therefore, I am taking legal action against those who slander and collude with the cartel’s bid to monopolise mining licences in Sabah,” said Arifin, who is also the son-in-law of Sabah Governor Musa Aman.

He also claimed that Malaysiakini did not contact him for verification of the whistleblower’s claims prior to publishing the report.

For the record, Malaysiakini contacted him for comments on the issue at 9.18am on Monday, as well as several others implicated in the story, before the report was published at 4pm that day. No response was received before the story was published.

In the report, the whistleblower - who is also a businessperson - claimed Arifin (above) had approached him with an offer to reinstate his company’s mining exploration licences that were previously revoked.

In exchange, the whistleblower would have to make a public statement declaring that the funds were “political donations” and that what transpired between him and Chief Minister Hajiji Noor was a “misunderstanding”.

In a media statement that was purportedly written for him, he was also supposed to apologise to the assemblypersons he had implicated and state he had made similar “contributions” to assemblypersons from Star, PBS, and Sabah Umno.

Malaysiakini was also furnished with more than 50 screenshots of WhatsApp conversations about the alleged settlement offer.

The whistleblower released videos late last year implicating several Sabah assemblypersons who appeared to be discussing bribes in exchange for supporting the whistleblower’s company’s application for licences to prospect for mineral resources.

Hajiji had dismissed the videos as “edited” and denied wrongdoing by his administration, but later suggested that the discussions may have been about political donations.

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