Once a Jolly Hangman (23 page)

Laroussi, as marketing manager at Bobby Rubino's, was in a perfect position to meet the 'right' people - socialites with little to occupy their minds and with too much cash in their wallets and purses. Although he was highly paid they provided him with a very lucrative source of income giving him millionaire status. Narcotics officers had been tailing Laroussi for two months and had spotted him on several occasions meeting suspected drug addicts outside nightclubs and pubs in various parts of Singapore. When the drugs found in his possession were weighed a second time they were suddenly and miraculously below the mandatory hanging offense. There was no mention of the dossier the CNB had compiled over the months of their surveillance. This, of course, is exactly what happened in the case of Julia Bohl, another major trafficker and drug party hostess, to prevent her country, Germany, coming to economic blows with the diminutive Singapore. It would have been the mismatch of the century. But in his case the astute Laroussi had his own game plan. During the CNB investigation he refused to name any of his other customers - while hinting there were more prominent members of Singapore's high society he could expose as serious drug users which, I was reliably informed, would create an
even bigger scandal among the country's elite. He decided to hold on to his secret list of clients as a bargaining chip - his ace in the hole - when the time was right, when the shadow of the gallows loomed. But it was this plea bargaining strategy that the authorities were only too pleased to entertain. 'They were terrified that if he were to be tried for a capital offence with the gallows as the end game, he would first 'blow the lid off' Singapore', a lawyer close to the case told me.

After he managed to do an amazing disappearing act even Harry Houdini might have envied, the authorities issued a statement to the media saying that if Laroussi were ever arrested and brought back to Singapore and tried he could still face the death penalty. There were also suggestions that Marx Oh Chee Wee could still be charged with the capital offence of trafficking if Laroussi was brought back. But it is very unlikely that will ever happen. For obvious reasons, it seems that no one is really interested in pursuing Laroussi further. Let sleeping dogs lie, seems to be the policy.
After the various trials and with Laroussi safely in his home country, CNB deputy director S. Vajkumar issued a strong warning on his website: 'We do not go easy on our enforcement on drugs. We will spare no community that gets involved'. Laroussi must have smiled at this threat wherever he was at the time. He knew that the last time an expatriate was hanged in Singapore was in 1991 when Dutchman Johannes van Damme was caught in transit at Changi airport with 4.3 kilograms of heroin which he wanted to deliver to the market in Athens.

On 10 February 2010 Interpol updated its website again featuring Laroussi on its list of wanted criminals for the fifth year running. It announced in its usual terse wording:

Guiga, Lyes Ben Laroussi, family name Guiga, date of birth June 14, 1969, place of birth: Le bardo, Tunisia; languages spoken French and English. Height 6' 3". Black hair. Offences: Drugs related crimes illegal possession and illegal traffic. Arrest warrant issue Singapore. The appeal:

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONTACT YOUR LOCAL OR NATIONAL POLICE.

I decided to respond to this appeal. Just before the publication of this book, I called Singapore police and the CNB with the information: 'I have it on good authority that Mr Laroussi is living with his family in Le Bardo, Tunisia.

I also put a call in to the current president of Interpol, the former Singaporean police chief Khoo Boon Hui, to add weight to the urgency of the situation. People like Laroussi are a menace to any society and should be hanged, I told him, parroting Senior Minister Goh Chock Tong. With more than 30 years of police experience also with Aseanapol and Interpol before Khoo became president, he would be the man to get him back. Under his leadership, he had helped protect Singapore from every kind of criminal, including drug traffickers, his supporters say. But this man, Laroussi, had been corrupting the morals of many well brought-up citizens and young highly trained foreigners for years, and was making a laughing stock of Singapore. How on earth did he manage to escape after negotiating the drug charges against him down from a hanging offence? In March 2010, Khoo, in his capacity as president of Interpol, was ordered to issue a red alert for the arrest of a runaway Romanian diplomat, Dr Silviu Ionescu, wanted for the hit-and-run death of a Singaporean. He fled home enraging Singaporeans who demanded he be arrested and brought back to face the consequences. So if Khoo can authorise a red alert for Silviu why not for Laroussi who might very likely be responsible for the deaths and destruction of many, many young lives, especially from the higher echelons of society? But perhaps the reason Laroussi has been allowed to fade into obscurity as far as Singapore is concerned is that no one wants this drug baron brought back for fear he might reveal even bigger names that would rock the island state to its foundations. That was his threat should he be tried and hanged by Darshan Singh. And that's how he managed to escape the noose!

The Sting

Vignes Mourthi's journey to the gallows began on 20 September 2001. He was the son of an ethnic Indian couple who ran a small coffee shop near their home in Ipoh, Malaysia. Many immigrants from India, as well as first and second generation Indians in that part of Malaysia, worked in the large rubber and oil palm plantations. Vignes Mourthi's parents had both worked on a rubber plantation where they met when they were young and eventually managed to scrape together enough money to open the coffee shop. They did not make much from the business, barely enough to support themselves and a family of four children. Seeing far better job opportunities in Singapore - to many Malaysians the land of milk and honey just across the causeway from Johor Bahru - Vignes Mourthi, then 18, headed south.

Singapore is, of course, renowned for its bustling economy and its hard-working labour force. But many of that labour force are not Singaporeans at all. In fact, the economy would take a rapid plunge if it suddenly had to make do without the thousands of lowly-paid foreign workers contributing to its impressive GDP. Many of these foreign workers live in Johor where living costs are much lower and commute to work in Singapore where pay is much higher. This is what young Vignes Mourthi decided to do when he moved south. He found a low-rent house in a semi-derelict part of the border town, a job in Singapore and commuted back and forth six days a week. By September 2001, he was working as a machine operator and packer for a freight company earning S$ 1,400 per month, a handsome sum for someone of his background and education but rather modest by Singaporean standards.

Although by the time he was 21 Vignes Mourthi had recently married he was able to send back two-thirds of his salary every month to his family in Ipoh. It was an arranged marriage and his wife, Pushpa, managed to find a job in a local factory to help the domestic budget. Despite all these responsibilities and the daily motorcycle commute across the border in drenching rain or sweltering sunshine, his life appeared to be going well. Until 15 September 2001, that is, when he met with an accident on his motorcycle on one of the journeys home. The injury sustained to a leg required expensive medical attention, he was unable to work for several days and his motorcycle was wrecked. It seems that an old family friend from Ipoh, Moorthy Angappan, heard about his accident and called by his home one evening for a chat. Angappan, a 27 year-old lorry driver, was more a friend of his father and when he also moved with his family to a nearby town in Johor, he promised to keep his eye on Vignes Mourthi. Angappan regarded him like a younger brother, it was said. They had not seen each other since the youngster had moved south first. During the friendly chat, Angappan asked him if he would make a delivery to a friend in Singapore as soon as he was well enough to return to work. The 'delivery' turned out to be two plastic-wrapped packets, one white and one red. Angappan had told him they contained incense stones used in Hindu ceremonies. As Vignes Mourthi knew that Angappan once owned a company dealing in this religious
commodity he thought nothing more of the request and readily agreed to do him this favour. Angappan told him his friend Tahir would give him S$8,000 in cash at the same time. Although this was a huge sum to Vignes Mourthi he told one of his lawyers, M. Ravi, that he thought this was also to do with a poultry business Angappan was planning to start up. Vignes Mourthi decided to return to work the next day riding pillion on a friend's motorcycle. Angappan said he would return 'a little later' with the 'incense stones'. A little later' turned out to be 2 a.m. The banging on the door woke up Vignes Mourthi's wife who then roused her husband who sleepily trundled to the front door, took possession of the packages, put them on a small coffee table in the hallway and went back to bed.

The checkpoint at Johor Bahru was fairly quiet when Vignes Mourthi and his friend, Jayacelan, who worked for the same company,
rode through at 5.30 a.m. and headed for the factory in Changi on the other side of the island. Around 8 a.m. Vignes Mourthi managed to call Tahir at the number Angappan had written on a slip of paper. Tahir told him he would try to borrow a car and pick up the packets later that morning. The pain in Vignes Mourthis injured leg was becoming unbearable again and was given the rest of the day off. He then called Angappan and asked him to make the delivery himself because he needed to get back home and seek medical help. But Angappan urged him to stay put until Tahir turned up and that he would pick him up and bring him back to Johor later in the day. He called Tahir and told him of the change of plan. He would go to the An Nur Mosque at Woodlands and hand over the package there. This time he borrowed Jayacelan's motorcycle for the journey. When he arrived he called Tahir's number again. This time the phone was answered by a man who called himself'Segar' who told him Tahir had been called away and that he would take the packages instead. He was told to look out for a silver car with the license plate 9073 and would arrive within 20 minutes. A short time later a silver car pulled up and a long-haired Indian man stepped out. Introductions complete, Vignes Mourthi then pulled the red plastic packet from his riding helmet, but before handing it over asked Segar about the money he was supposed to receive from Tahir. Segar pulled out a thick wad of notes and handed this to Mourthi who checked just briefly to see if it was the S$8,000 he was supposed to pick up. Segar smiled and gave a thumbs-up. The young man thought this was a friendly sign of approval. In fact, it was a pre-arranged signal to eight of his associates, all officers of the Central Narcotics Bureau. They rushed from their hiding places and surrounded Vignes Mourthi. It was a very neat sting operation. Segar then introduced himself as Sgt S. Rajkumar, an undercover officer. Vignes Mourthis life was as good as over.

All the above is roughly Vignes Mourthis account of what happened to him that day. Sgt Rajkumar had another account. And Moorthy Angappan, the family friend, on his way from Johor to pick up Vignes Mourthi near the An Nur Mosque, had another version. His lawyer told the High Court in Singapore where he was fighting for his life, that he was waiting near a fruit shop a short distance from the mosque when Vignes Mourthi called him again to ask if he had arrived. A short
while later two cars drove up to a spot not far from where Angappan was waiting. Unknown to him at that stage, Vignes Mourthi was in one of the cars. He peered out of the window, identified the man
wearing a grey shirt as Angappan and his 'brother' - a term of affection, not of blood relation. The head of the sting operation, ASP Krishnan and another officer approached Angappan. They identified themselves as CNB agents and asked Angappan what he was doing lingering near the fruit shop. He said he was waiting for a friend but refused to name him. The officers then arrested him for being part of the drug transaction they had just intercepted. Angappan's life had just been given an approximate expiration date as well. They were both taken in separate cars to Clementi Police Station to be interrogated.

Were they accomplices, dupes or false accusers? It was a tangled web with many loose ends which the CNB easily managed to unravel - they knew the entire story even before it began unfolding. But they had to prove their case in court. The lives of two young men were at stake. Vignes Mourthi insisted he was an innocent dupe who believed he was delivering was 'incense stones' not heroin. He was just doing Angappan, an old family friend, a favour. 'Moorthy [Angappan] told me it was incense stones', he told his interrogators. 'I have never seen heroin before. I only knew it was some sort of drugs after I was arrested'. He did not question the large amount of money he was supposed to pick up because it would have been 'disrespectful' to question Angappan, an older person. It would be like asking Angappan intimate questions about his relations with his wife. He made several statements implicating Angappan who, he said, had lied about the true nature of the transaction and tricked him into becoming a 'mule'. Any bond between them was now totally in shreds, and it was Angappan who had done the shredding, according to Vignes Mourthi. It did not help that his wife of only five months, totally shocked by what happened, left him. They never saw each other again. She refused to visit him in jail and made only a sworn statement confirming Angappan's visits to their home. The only other witnesses to back up Vignes Mourthi's story in court were his two sisters. Angappan, likewise, denied everything. He claimed he was the hapless victim of a family friend, completely ignorant of the crime and had been set up by Vignes Mourthi, a man whom he had only sought to help out that day thus putting himself in
mortal danger. He denied even being at Vignes Mourthi's home on the evening of 19 September. In fact, he claimed he was attending a belated birthday party for a nephew many kilometres away in another town. He was home by 11 a.m., watched television and then went to bed. He called family witnesses to confirm his claims. The only contact he had with Vignes Mourthi was around 10 a.m. the day of his arrest when he received two phone calls to bring him back to Johor. After the second call he agreed and his good turn' ended with him facing the death penalty as a drugs trafficker.