Batohi armed with damaging new information

October 3, 2000 by neil manthorp

On the face of it, Shami­la Bato­hi has returned from India with noth­ing new to add to the evi­dence the King Com­mis­sion has already obtained. But is that real­ly the case? I think not.
The King Com­mis­sion’s ‘pros­e­cu­tor’ admit­ted that the authen­ti­cat­ed tran­scripts that will be with her from India short­ly con­tain no more than the snip­pets of con­ver­sa­tion that most of us saw in the media when the Cron­je scan­dal broke. BUT, this time, they are authenticated.
Fol­low­ers of the Com­mis­sion will remem­ber how many times Bato­hi was knocked back in her ques­tion­ing of Cron­je (and oth­er wit­ness­es) when she referred to the tapes. Cron­je’s legal team, not sur­pris­ing­ly, object­ed when­ev­er the taped con­ver­sa­tions were men­tioned because they were ‘hearsay’. Not any more.
Now Bato­hi can demand answers and push as hard as she likes to get them. Remem­ber Cron­je’s line: “…the guys are already unhap­py that they haven’t received their mon­ey from the last one…”
That com­ment, amongst oth­ers, can now be explored. It is offi­cial. It was said, and it was said by Cronje.
Bato­hi may not have copies of oth­er, incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, but her ‘col­leagues’ (and that is cer­tain­ly how they treat­ed her and she treat­ed them, despite very dif­fer­ent inves­ti­ga­tions) most def­i­nite­ly shared infor­ma­tion with her. She will now piece togeth­er the ‘offi­cial’ and ‘unof­fi­cial’ evi­dence and her choice of ques­tion­ing will no longer be ham­pered by seeminly pet­ty but impor­tant legalities.
Hor­ri­fy­ing rumours grow stronger by the day that Cron­je may even have shared a bank account with for­mer Indi­an cap­tain Moham­mad Azhar­rudin, based — believe it or not — in the Cay­man Islands. Indi­an police and tax offi­cials, remem­ber, have already siezed doc­u­men­ta­tion, bank state­ments and oth­er ‘evi­dence’ per­tain­ing to the finan­cial deal­ings of atleast six Indi­an play­ers and sev­er­al more past and present offi­cials. Bato­hi may not be able to bring her knowl­edge of that doc­u­men­ta­tion into pub­lic ‘court’ when hear­ings resume, but the knowl­edge itself is what counts.
If there is more to come, and the ‘word’ is that there is plen­ty, then Bato­hi now — final­ly — seems to be in a posi­tion to expose it.