Now, while all this was going on, while I was scrambling to raise the money to save my house, P.I. Bala and the Pakatan Rakyat people go and make nasty statements about deals I am doing with Umno. Then I discover that P.I. Bala is in secret negotiations with Hamzah Zainuddin, one of the chaps who is the cause of my financial problems.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

So you think you have soul, do you? Well, how do you know? Are you really sure you have soul? You probably think that soul is that thing that leaves your body and goes to heaven or hell when you die. That is not soul, at least not the type of soul that I mean.

People who have soul listen to Santana, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Grand Funk, Jimi Hendix, The Rolling Stones, and bands of their ilk. The list just goes on and you can throw in The Kinks, Manfred Mann, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and whatnot if you want to -- still good to listen to after all these years, 50 years to be exact.

Anyway, depending on what I wish to write for the day, I will switch on my iTunes and search through my library of albums and play the songs that will put me in the mood that I want to be in. And today, as I write this, I am playing Santana’s ‘Guitar Heaven’. And the volume of my Bose speakers will blow your mind, let me assure you.

So, with Santana’s ‘Guitar Heaven’ blaring away in the background, guess what mood I am currently in. Yes, I am in that type of the mood -- the mood that wants to break heads and smash faces. And the head I want to break and the face I want to smash is that of private investigator Balasubramaniam a/l Perumal, a.k.a P.I. Bala.

Is that unfair of me? Well, I hold dear the old belief that if you ‘share salt’ at the same table with someone, then you do not betray that person. In fact, that is the sure way of knowing that you are not going to be betrayed. You share salt at the same table with your host/guest and that is the guarantee you will get to walk away from that table in one piece. No host/guest will assassinate you when you share salt at his table.

But that is an old English belief and P.I. Bala is not English. Hence he does not understand what I would regard as noble and honourable values. Hence, after he shared salt at my table, he turned around and betrayed me. Even assassins do not do this. But P.I Bala did this. And because of that it is warranted that I put a price on his head. So now he can’t go back to Malaysia like he hoped he could. A person with a price on his head is worth more dead than alive.

To understand what I am driving at, I will have to rewind 15 years or so. And the personalities involved are Datuk Hamzah Zainuddin, the Deputy Minister for Plantation Industries and Commodities; Nik Anuar Nik Salleh, the business partner of Datuk Kamaruddin Jaafar, the PAS Member of the Parliament for Tumpat; James Au, the one-time General Manager of Rhone Poulenc; and Abdul Rahman Adnan, a lawyer and one of Anwar Ibrahim’s speech writers in Institut Kajian Dasar or IKD. Incidentally, Nik Anuar’s wife, Zaidah Omar Baki, is the best friend of Anwar Ibrahim’s sister, Farizon.

And the story goes as follows.

Hamzah Zainuddin and Nik Anuar were doing business with Rhone Poulenc through their company called Medik & Kimia 2000 Sdn Bhd. Rhone Poulenc was importing unapproved vaccines for poultry and pigs so they were not able to market them since they were not approved by the government. Hence Medik & Kimia 2000 Sdn Bhd was used as the front company to do all the distribution. In the event that the authorities found out, Rhone Poulenc would not face prosecution.

Of course, not long after that, Malaysia faced a huge problem and many diseased pigs had to be culled at a great loss to the pig farmers. Many pig farmers also died. Hence it made sense to shield Rhone Poulenc from something like this by using a front company such as Medik & Kimia 2000 Sdn Bhd.

Anyway, James Au, Hamzah Zainuddin and Nik Anuar later came out with a plan to fleece Rhone Poulenc of a couple of million Ringgit. They siphoned out more than RM1 million but they had to make it appear like James Au attempted to recover the money or else he might be implicated in the scam.

However, instead of suing the company, Hamzah Zainuddin or Nik Anuar, they sued me. And the suit was for RM1.3 million. And in that statement of claim they alleged that I had guaranteed that amount.

I went to see Abdul Rahman Adnan, my classmate in school and one of Anwar Ibrahim’s ‘key men’, and requested him to act for me, which he agreed. On the day of the hearing, Rahman went to court but the judge would not listen to our arguments. Rhone Poulenc’s lawyer insisted that I had guaranteed that debt and the judge would not listen to Rahman’s argument that I never guaranteed that debt and that the document is a fake.

That same day, Rahman asked me to go to his office and he related what had happened in court. Rahman explained that the judge told them she was late for a lunch appointment so she was in a hurry to make her decision and did not have time to listen to long drawn-out arguments. Hence we lost the case -- because the judge was pressed for time and was late for her lunch appointment.

I asked Rahman what I should do and he suggested that I should transfer or sell any property that I might own before they get me declared a bankrupt. I was flabbergasted. Was this the best advice Rahman could offer me?

I then went to Sri Ram and Co. to seek the advise of the late Manjit Singh Gurcharan Singh. Manjit looked at my case and said that the case is so simple he cannot understand why Rahman Adnan could not win it for me. I told Manjit about the judge being late for lunch and all that and Manjit replied that this normally happens -- younger lawyers get intimidated by senior judges so the judges would bully them.

Manjit agreed to help me and winked that his boss, Sri Ram, was the President of the Appeal Court. I suppose that meant Sri Ram would not brush off our case with the excuse that he was late for lunch.

However, Manjit found he could not take this matter further because somehow the entire file had disappeared. Manjit told me that this is also quite normal. It costs a very little to bribe an office boy to make files disappear. Many lawyers do this, Manjit explained.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Manjit died and I was detained under ISA. On the third day of my detention, they sent a letter to my house giving me 14 days to contest the bankruptcy application against me. I was, of course, detained for almost 60 days so they made me a bankrupt by default. By the time I was released it was already water under the bridge and I did not have the money to engage a lawyer to take this case to court.

To add insult to injury -- or rather more injury to injury -- they quietly deleted my name on the land title of my house without informing me. I did not know until later when I tried to sell my house that I no longer owned that house.

The lawyer told me that they can’t do this and he suggested that I take this case to court and challenge it. The lawyer was confident I could win because the transfer was done illegally. But it would probably take many years and tens of thousands in legal fees.

I felt it would be a waste of time and money. I could not afford ten years and the RM50,000 or RM100,000 in legal fees. Instead, I asked my daughter to go meet the authorities and try to negotiate a settlement. They agreed that this matter can be settled for a payment of RM215,000. We tried to appeal this figure but it was rejected. The figure stays at RM215,000.

My daughter then went to the bank to secure a loan for an amount of RM215,000 to pay off the authorities. A few months ago we paid the authorities the RM215,000 to ‘buy back’ my house.

Now, while all this was going on, while I was scrambling to raise the money to save my house, P.I. Bala and the Pakatan Rakyat people go and make nasty statements about deals I am doing with Umno. Then I discover that P.I. Bala is in secret negotiations with Hamzah Zainuddin, one of the chaps who is the cause of my financial problems.

Fucking hell! I was made a bankrupt because a judge was late for lunch. I was sued for RM1.3 million on the false allegation that I had guaranteed a debt by an Umno Deputy Minister -- while he was not sued whereas he is a multi-millionaire who had paid his wife RM10 million in a divorce settlement. Then they illegally transferred my house and forced me to pay RM215,000 to ‘buy back’ the house. And P.I. Bala and these Pakatan Rakyat people have the gall to say I have made a deal.

Man, if that is what they do to me when I ‘make a deal’, imagine what they would do to me if there were no deal. Yes, that is the type of mood I am in today. I am in a fucking mood. And blame it all on Santana.