Abusing his privilege
Sir: The article 'Who killed Rajan Pillai' (15 July) by Mr R.A. Jones QC contains many inaccuracies and distortions.
Jones suddenly discharged himself after representing Pillai for nine days, leaving his juniors to obtain an adjournment to bring in another lawyer. The trial went on for another 56 days. Jones's claim that Pillai was innocent of all but minor infringements of company law is astonishing, given that the prosecution led evidence on 22 of the 26 charges against Pillai only after Jones's discharge.
Contraxy to Jones's claim that the testi- mony of Anthony Joseph, a prosecution witness, was favourable to Pillai, in fact it incriminated Pillai on 22 of the 24 charges.
Jones's complaint about prompting or coaching of witnesses was untrue. He did not complain to the judge. Further, if Jones thought that a fair trial was not possible, he could have applied to have the charges tried in the High Court. He did not and instead chose to let Pillai be defended by Pillai's second-choice lawyers. Jones must know that any errors of the trial judge could be corrected on appeal.
Jones has stated that no public interest lay in prosecuting 'someone for allegedly rising early enough in the morning to deceive a lethal corporate raider like John- son'. Jones is entitled to his own standard of commercial probity, but he should not impose it on Singaporeans.
I could go on debunking Jones's claims but for pressure of space. Singapore is one of the few sovereign states to still allow English QCs to appear in its courts. Instead of using that privilege to defend his client, Jones has abused it to denounce the judge and now the Singapore criminal justice sys- tem in order to champion Nick Leeson's case to be tried in England instead of Sin- gapore.
Abdul Aziz Mahmood
High Commissioner for the Republic of Singapore, Singapore High Commission, 9 Wilton Crescent, London SW1
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