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Hi Pete,
I refer to your article in No Holds Barred entitled ‘About sex and bribery’ and think you got the facts about the Zakaria Chek case on the car smuggling syndicate somewhat wrong.
For you kind information, the Customs Department was not involved in this scam. In fact, much to our exasperation, we were impeded in our investigations.
I was personally involved in the investigation of the case as part of a special task force in 1991. We single-handedly cracked the case after obtaining information from a confidential informant. It was only after we started confiscating the cars -- most of which were Honda Accords -- that the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA; now MACC) approached us and said that they wanted to take-over the investigation.
We then decided that there would be a joint and parallel investigation together with the ACA and Bukit Aman.
The modus operandi, in a nutshell, was that cars from Singapore (presumably stolen but usually deregistered) would be driven by syndicate members into Johor Bharu through the Causeway. Yes, the cars came from Singapore but it went through as ‘day visits’ and then left on the roadside where police officers, who were colluding with the syndicate, would confiscate them and take them to the police impound warehouse.
After about a month, these cars would be forfeited and then ‘auctioned off’ by the police. The ‘auction’ was fixed so that a Mr Chen (a second-hand car dealer) would successfully bid for the cars. Once the cars were auctioned off, they were then reregistered with the Johor Bharu Road Transport Department and presented with legitimised logbooks.
Zakaria Chek was involved and so was the then Johor Bharu OCPD, Dato Rahim, who was charged along with a group of around eight police officers who operated from an office in Jalan Meldrum preparing the auction documents.
When we called in Mr Chen for investigation and questioning, he even boasted that he would make sure that we would all get transferred out and that we would feel the wrath of the police bearing against us. He was always seen with Zakaria Chek and Dato Rahim and even had a personal police staff stick that he carried around.
Our team even wanted to conduct a raid on the Johor Bahru central police station to secure evidence but was advised not to do so by HQ, as this would be the first time in history where a police station would be raided and this could cause irreparable reputational damage. However, we gathered such convincing evidence that Dato Rahim and a few other officers were convicted. Zakaria Chek escaped prosecution but was then stuffed in ‘cold storage’.
We seized more than 200 cars.
Although I cannot confirm whether this is the retaliation Mr Chen meant, a few months after the case was exposed, Customs officers were harassed at the Causeway by traffic police officers and summoned for even the most minor of traffic offences. Many officers ended up with dozens of traffic summonses. This, however, was resolved later through mediation.
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