PETALING JAYA: The Government must be held accountable for governance gaps in the management of court bail payments through e-Jamin, says Malaysian Bar president Anand Raj.
He said the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, which was tabled to Dewan Rakyat on Oct 5, had raised serious concerns over the absence of a formal contract for the digital bail payment system.
Anand questioned why the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) had advised in 2019 that no agreement was necessary in the PAC report, despite a previous Finance Ministry letter requiring one to protect the government’s interests.
“It is unclear why that view was taken, and why this state of affairs remained unchanged for so many years, notwithstanding the Finance Ministry’s requirement for an agreement,” he said in a press statement on Tuesday (Oct 13).
He said that written contracts with clear terms and minimum service standards were essential to ensure public service providers could be held accountable.
“This is to ensure that service providers can be held accountable and that the public are protected by the Government and acting in the best interests of the public,” Anand said.
He stressed that the PAC report’s findings went beyond financial matters, exposing governance weaknesses and raising questions about how bail money was handled.
Anand also clarified that the Malaysian Bar is neither the owner nor the operator of e-Jamin and that the Bar’s engagement on e-Jamin was focused on access to bail and the protection of accused persons’ rights.
He urged politicians to stop involving the Malaysian Bar in party politics, stressing that it neither owned nor operated e-Jamin.
Anand said the Bar’s involvement in e-Jamin had focused on ensuring access to bail and protecting accused persons’ rights, while its ability to investigate was limited compared with the PAC’s parliamentary powers.
“The role of the Bar should not be misunderstood nor politicised in a manner that might divert attention away from the state actors and real issues identified by PAC,” he said.
To this, he urged MPs to raise the matter during Question Time in Parliament, particularly with the Finance Ministry, Prime Minister and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform).
“Malaysia is counting on the PAC and MPs to strive to ensure that there should never be any gaps in governance and that public services are always delivered to the highest standards of service quality, and the public is always protected,” he added.
The Oct 5 PAC report had revealed that the courts' online bail payment system operator was found to have invested RM130.8mil of bail money under its own name as bail money paid through the system entered into the commercial accounts of the system operator instead of the Consolidated Trust Account.
This then allowed the company, Dapat Vista Sdn Bhd, to reportedly earn up to RM5mil a year in interest while operating without a government contract for five years.
