Did MACC officer have authority to extract private messages?

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MACC Officer's Authority to Extract Private Messages Questioned in Court

During the trial of Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman, a Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) forensic officer, Wan Mohd Firdaus Wan Yusoff, was unable to identify the specific legal provision that granted him the authority to examine private messages from a mobile phone. This occurred when defence counsel Gobind Singh Deo questioned the officer's actions regarding the extraction of data from the phone belonging to Rafiq Hakim Razali, a colleague of Syed Saddiq. The officer stated he was following instructions from his superiors to extract messages from WhatsApp groups.
Legal Basis for Evidence Extraction Unspecified

When directly asked by Gobind Singh Deo to cite the legal provisions that permitted him to investigate private messages on a mobile phone, Wan Mohd Firdaus, an MACC employee with eight years of experience, could not provide an answer. This led to a pointed exchange where the defence argued that the officer had no right to intercept or examine these messages if there was no explicit legal authorisation, suggesting the messages were unrelated to the charges at hand. The officer clarified that the messages were "extracted," not "intercepted," but still could not specify the legal framework under which this extraction took place.
Relevance of Extracted Messages Disputed

Further questioning by the defence focused on the relevance of the extracted WhatsApp messages from groups named "ValueAdd" and "Oceans17" to the charges faced by Syed Saddiq. The charges involve criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of funds amounting to RM1 million and RM120,000. Wan Mohd Firdaus expressed uncertainty when asked if these messages pertained to the alleged misappropriation of RM250,000, contradicting an earlier assertion about the relevance of the messages. The officer eventually conceded he was unsure and did not read all the messages, only extracting them as instructed.
Defence Suggests Unrelated Evidence Extraction

The defence counsel suggested that the MACC might have intentionally extracted evidence from an unrelated matter to build a case against Syed Saddiq. This was raised after the officer stated he was unaware of news reports that conflated the funds in the current trial with a reported RM250,000 theft from Syed Saddiq's family home. The MACC officer disagreed with the suggestion that unrelated evidence was being used. The trial concerns allegations of abetting criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of funds entrusted to Armada, the youth wing of Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia.

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Did MACC officer have authority to extract private messages?

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