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Tuesday January 22, 2008

Clip taken by accident

KUALA LUMPUR: The person, who took the controversial clip purportedly showing a lawyer brokering the appointment of judges over a mobile phone, said it was made by accident.

Loh Gwo Burne, the 34-year-old son of businessman Loh Mui Fah, said he was trying to take a picture of a vase when he realised his digital camera was on video mode.

“I then continued to record the conversation between Datuk V.K. Lingam and the other person on the other line.

“I was bored and fed up with the lawyer for constantly talking on the phone, as he was supposed to discuss legal matters with my father,” said the 12th witness on the sixth day of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the video clip yesterday.

"I was bored and fed up with the lawyer for constantly talking on the phone" - LOH GWO BURNE
When questioned by DPP Datuk Nordin Hassan, Gwo Burne, a Shanghai-based consultant, said he had gone to Lingam’s house in the middle of December 2001 with his father.

Gwo Burne said Lingam was aware that he had a digital camera, as when they arrived at his house, he had asked for permission to take photographs of the lawyer’s dog and videos of the house.

He said Lingam had also asked him to take group photos, adding that shortly after they arrived at about 6pm, Lingam had gone out to buy wine.

When DPP Nordin questioned if Lingam or his father was aware that he was recording the conversation, Gwo Burne said neither of them knew.

To a question by his counsel Alex De Silva, Gwo Burne said Lingam did not appear drunk when the video clip was recorded.

He said the recording was taken earlier in the evening, and both his father and Lingam did not have many drinks.

Asked if he thought the lawyer was play-acting, he replied, “No, there were times I could hear a male voice, although I did not know what the person was saying.”

At the start of court proceedings, DPP Nordin has questioned Gwo Burne on what he did with the photographs and the recording, to which the witness replied that he had downloaded them from his camera’s memory card into his personal computer, and later deleted the data from the card.

He said he had burned the data into a compact disc, and that before he left for China in 2004, he had stored the CD in “various sources,” which he took along with him.

Gwo Burne said he gave one copy of the CD to lawyer Manjit Singh, who had since died, adding that his original personal computer where he downloaded the recording was no longer with him.

When asked how the video clip went public, Gwo Burne said he initially though it was Manjit Singh, but later found out that he had passed away.

Gwo Burne said he had given a copy of the CD containing the video clip to Manjit Singh, as both of them had complaints about Lingam.

“I had complained about Lingam not attending to the legal matters and Manjit Singh complained of not being paid, and he said that ‘this guy always politics, politics, politics’.

“So I told him in that case, he had to check the video clip out, and gave him a copy in 2002.”

Thayalan said if he had no idea how the clip went public, there was a possibility that other people had access to the clip and it was possible to edit the clip, to which Gwo Burne said: “Not entirely impossible.”

When Thayalan pointed out that the camera seemed to be placed behind a book, as it seemed from the video, Gwo Burne said he was reading a magazine and a coffeetable book at that time, and that the camera was hung around his neck.

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