On the day of the Annual General Meeting,
20th April 2018, Salil Innab, founder and CEO of Novasten Sdn
Bhd, formerly known as Innab Trade Sdn Bhd, filed an ex-parte injunction
against Setia Sky Residences, a service apartment complex in the Jalan Raja
Muda Abdul Aziz area of Kuala Lumpur.
The lawsuit complained, among other
things, that Setia had harassed tenants and breached its agreement with its
proprietors as well as the provisions of relevant law by requiring the
plaintiff to immediately stop providing short-term rental tenancies to his
clients through his company.
Another notable lawsuit filed by
Innab;
What differentiates the Verve case from
the pending Setia case is that Setia has taken the law into their own hands by
exercising unlawful practices to forcibly prohibit the short-term tenancies,
without having passed any by-laws prohibiting such tenancies.
However, while the public outcome of the
case is well known, what many do not know is the deadly circumstances that
underlay this case for so long and eventually led to Innab having to flee
Malaysia in the middle of the night in order to protect his life.
This is the account of the circumstances
underlying
Shady connections to power
Innab filed his lawsuit against Setia in
order to contend what he thought was a purely contractual and administrative
law dispute. However, the several inconsistencies and inexplicable events that
began to ensue immediately suggested this was not the case.
First, while Innab did not know this at
the outset of his lawsuit, it subsequently became apparent that he was fighting
not just against Setia, but also against higher powers. Due to increasing
resistance against the lawsuit he filed, Innab conducted an investigation and
found out that Setia had a link to former Malaysia Prime Minister Datuk Seri
Najib Razak. Apparently, Najib Razak has a vested interest in SP Setia, which in
turn is the developer for Setia Sky Residences.
In addition to this, Razak has an
interest in Ambank (M) Berhard. The significance of this will become apparent
when further facts are related below.
Suspicious delays
At the outset of filing, Innab expected
that the case would proceed, if not quickly, at least relatively steadily. It
did proceed in this manner as first, especially when the case was assigned to
Judge Darryl S.C. Goon, who oversaw significant early progress in the lawsuit.
Innab’s counsel Dato’ Manpal unilaterally
acted on substantial matters requiring Innab’s involvement, and even against
Innab’s instructions, on several occasions. On one such occasion, Manpal
unilaterally applied for and obtained a postponement of the final hearing date
for permanent injunctive relief, against Innab’s objection.
Subsequently, for ostensibly
‘administrative reasons’, the case was reassigned to Judge Mohd Sofian Abd
Razak and from this point, all progress slowed to a crawl and eventually
stopped.
The lawsuit became characterized by
multiple adjournments of varying lengths to such an extent that very little
substantive hearing was done in the case. For a period of roughly two years,
there was almost no progress in the lawsuit. In addition to this, Judge Abd Razak
was also mysteriously assigned another of Innab’s High Court appeals against
members of Verve Suites;
Innab subsequently found out that Judge
Abd Razak had links to a UMNO member who was also tied to former Prime Minister
Najib Razak. On discovering the connection, Innab immediately instructed his
attorney to request that the judge recuse himself, as such connections, in this
case, may raise the likelihood of bias. The attorney failed to accede to this
request and several subsequent requests.
In fact, Judge Abd Razak continued to
hold onto the case even after he was promoted to the Court of Appeals and was
no longer a member of the High Court.
Unethical conduct of
counsel
If Innab had any illusions about what he
was up against, these were quickly dispelled by the exasperating and patently
unethical conduct he experienced from his lawyer, Dato Manpal. Unknown to Innab
at the time he hired this attorney, Manpal was connected to former PM Najib
Razak. Manpal is a cousin and attorney to Pavitar Singh, an ex-partner of Innab
who was introduced to Innab by Dato Manpal, who later defrauded him, and who
was later found to be closely associated with Najib Razak.
Even worse, Manpal overtly tried to
frustrate Innab’s case further, Innab had initially instructed Manpal to file a
request to withdraw and with liberty to file afresh in an attempt to put an end
to the delay being occasioned by Judge Abd Razak. However, Manpal failed to do
this immediately.
Inexplicably, when the case had been
reassigned to a new judge, Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali, Manpal then decided to
request to withdraw with liberty to file afresh, later claiming not knowing
about the reassignment to Judge Mohd Nazlan, despite that the letter clearly is
addressing the new Judge.
Harassment and assassination
attempts
As if the judicial manipulation and sabotage
carried out on behalf of the defendants was not enough, there were several
attempts to harass Innab. Just days after filing for an injunction in April
2018, Innab was called in by the Dang Wangi Police and was arrested on
malicious grounds.
The complaint alleged that Innab was
guilty of criminal intimidation against one Nithianandan A/L Rajasingham during
the General Meeting where he applied for the injunction. Rajasingham was, at
the time, a defendant in a conspiracy and defamation lawsuit which Innab
initiated. In addition, he was to be elected as a chairman of Setia Sky and
Verve Suites although he had to step down after corruption investigations were
opened against him by MACC.
Another incident involved a malicious
attempt to target Innab’s corporate account in Ambank. While attempting to
conduct an audit of said account, he discovered a catalog of forged documents,
unknown transactions and cheques, falsified bank statements, and forged
signatures of bank opening forms. This was indicative of the bank staff’s
involvement in the conspiracy.
However, the attempts to discredit,
harass, and even silence Innab did not stop there. On a different occasion,
narcotics were planted inside Innab’s car. Prior to this discovery, Innab
reported certain trespassers harassing him in his gated community, and officers
from the Sentul district (a police department from another district, that has
at several occasions unexplainedly targeted Innab) showed up.
Only, this time, they were hostile to
Innab for no reason, and, instead of addressing the trespassers, demanded that
Innab get into his company car and go with them to the police station to lodge
a report. There are significant questions about how they knew which car was his
since it was not parked in the driveway.
Innab however, while recording the
incident on his iPhone, informed the officers that he had no road tax and could
not drive to the station as a result. A week later, while attempting to have
his car cleaned, Innab discovered what looked like narcotics in his car and
upon further research, he found it to be crystal methamphetamine – in
sufficient quantity to warrant a mandatory death penalty upon conviction.
Apart from this, Innab’s detractors have
taken even more direct steps to eliminate him. In October 2020, Innab and his
security personnel were invited to a meeting by one Bukit Aman officer and a
lawyer called Farhan Read. Read was ostensibly there to help Innab with the
challenges of the case and Innab was told that the lawyer wins 100% of his
cases. He did not understand what this meant until Read left saying, “I am now
leaving to meet my client; the former prime minister.”
Apparently, Read was representing former
PM Najib Razak, and confirming this, Read sent a text message to Innab soon
after the meeting, asking if there was any possibility that Innab could walk
away from “everything”. He also recommended Innab “to get more bodyguards”
because he might get shot while “sitting in a Mamak” as “one bodyguard may not
be enough”.
Sure enough, a few days later, at around
3 am, Innab woke up to his dogs aggressively barking at someone outside. He
asked his security personnel, who was stationed at his home 24/7 to prepare his
firearm but instead, the guard admitted that the firearm was taken away from
him the same day without explanation.
Innab immediately packed what evidence he
could fit in a bag, discreetly made his way to the airport, and fled Malaysia.
He later found out that his personal security guard was an 18-year ex-special
force security personnel that was also associated with the former prime
minister.
Several months later, and Innab is still
recovering. His house, his office, and his Malaysian bank accounts have all
been ransacked by various “friends”, “staff”, “partners”, and financial
institutions.
Most important, however, is the need to
set the record straight and get the true facts of the circumstances underlying
these events into the public domain.
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