Sabah MCA lodges report against Thomas over letter to Sulu heirs

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah MCA has lodged a police report against former attorney general Tan Sri Tommy Thomas over a 2019 letter he sent to lawyers representing heirs of the defunct Sulu Sultanate.

In a statement, Sabah MCA said the letter from a Malaysian AG to the Sulu heirs’ lawyers had put Malaysia’s sovereignty at risk by triggering the Paris Arbitration Court’s US$14.92bil (RM66.4bil) award in the claimants’ favour.

The claimants are self-proclaimed descendants of the sultanate, who are seeking their annual “cession payments” from Malaysia for a colonial-era land deal involving land in Borneo that later became parts of Sabah.

In the statement, Sabah MCA urged the police to investigate the letter and take action against Thomas if they found any wrongful conduct on his part.

“Thomas, as the AG at that time, needs to explain to the public the contents of the letter with transparency,” the statement said, adding that Thomas had yet to make any statement since the French Court of Arbitration award in February this year.

Last week, Malaysia obtained a stay order of the Paris court arbitration award and is in process of seeking to overturn it.

Sabah MCA is also calling on the police to investigate if the then Pakatan Harapan Cabinet had discussed the details of the letter with Thomas.

They noted that former finance minister Lim Guan Eng and former entrepreneur development and cooperatives minister Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan Md Yusof had denied that there had been any discussion about the letter, which purportedly stated that Malaysia was willing to pay the arrears of cession payment amounting to RM48,300 to the heirs that was stopped following the Lahad Datu intrusion in 2013.

Putrajaya stopped paying the cession payments of RM5,300 a year to the claimants after the intrusion.

Though Malaysia obtained a stay order on the Paris arbitration court award, the Sulu heirs’ London-based lawyers used the ruling under the New York Convention to seize the assets of two Petronas subsidiary companies in Luxembourg last week.

Putrajaya has repeatedly stated that it does not recognise the Paris arbitration award obtained by arbitrator Gonzalo Stampa.