When Attorney-General Dusuki Mokhtar declared on Jan 12 that Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi's corruption case was "settled once and for all", he could have unwittingly exposed a fundamental breach of prosecutorial procedure established by one of his predecessors.

This comes after the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), on Feb 24, said it did not object to Zahid’s (above) application for full acquittal from 47 corruption charges involving Yayasan Akalbudi funds, the Kuala Lumpur High Court heard.

The question centres on Public Prosecutor Direction No. 2/2019, a directive issued by then-attorney-general Tommy Thomas on May 3, 2019.

It established stringent safeguards against the discontinuance of criminal proceedings. A close examination of Dusuki's handling of Zahid's case reveals what appears to be a...