Malaysia: Businessman charged with laundering

In the style of Indian names, he is known only by a short form of something long and complicated therefore the charge sheet reads "S. M. Segaran," the 44 year old managing director of Bidara Prisma Sdn Bhd, a private company. He pleaded not guilty when the charges were put to him in the district court at Petaling Jaya (which, in the style of Malaysian place names is truncated to PJ).

Segaran is charged with a range of fraud offences - called "cheat" under the Malaysian penal code. His alleged victim? The Malaysian Federal Police headquarters at the much feared place known as "Bukit Aman."

Bukit Aman is the place that no criminals want to go: the former home of the commercial crime bureau, it is now not just the headquarters of the Federal Police but also of Special Branch. Special Branch is so special that they don't have business cards and they don't give out phone numbers. In fact, we know quite a number - and suspect we know rather more than we know we know - and they are universally very clever and very nice people.

Honestly.

The Segaran story is particularly interesting because it potentially casts light on something else that's causing problems in Selangor, the state next to Kuala Lumpur (which is, of course, known as KL).

Last month, the Selangor district council was in uproar because one of its senior members demanded that their two years old Proton cars be sold and replaced with Japanese models. He said that his own car, a Proton Perdana executive model, had cost MYR30,000 to maintain. When similar allegations were raised by another state several months ago, Proton denied that their cars could possibly require so much maintenance and repair in such a short period - and also that if there were such failures, the long-term warranty would cover them. However, no warranty claims had been made in that case, Proton said.

Until relatively recently, most Proton models were modified versions of former Mitsubishi models. The Perdana is one of them.

Back to Bukit Aman's cars. It is alleged that Segaran supplied parts for both Proton and Mitsubishi vehicles. He specified and invoiced for genuine parts. But, the police say, counterfeit or pattern parts were fitted.

Segaran says he supplied genuine parts and if what's in the cars is different, it's someone else's fault.

He was bailed in July 2008 for the alleged fraud to which he pleaded not guilty. But the new charges are in relation to very serious amounts of money. The most expensive Proton is less than MYR100,000 in Malaysia and some are considerably less. The MYR768,000 which is the basis of the money laundering charges would have bought perhaps a dozen new cars.

And given the resources that police forces have to work with, that's money they can ill afford to lose.