Former premier Najib Abdul Razak's defence team is expected to make a request in court tomorrow to have a bundle of trial documents under Section 51A of the Criminal Procedure Code be delivered to them in hardcopy form.
A source said the defence team viewed this issue seriously since they were only provided with a CD allegedly containing the trial documents yesterday.
They said this was after the prosecution team led by Attorney-General’s Chambers Trial and Appeals division head Mohd Hanafiah Zakaria gave out "excuses" in court that the documents were not ready.
"A member of the prosecution team had handed over the CD marked with the letter 'A' to the defence team yesterday.
"Earlier in court, they claimed that the documents were not ready," said the source, adding that the handover of the documents in the form of a CD was not a normal court practice and was 'clearly wrong'.
"There's supposed to be a form and the documents must be provided according to the index which must be signed by the receiver. The documents must be in hard copy," he said, adding that Najib was also perplexed with the handover of the CD.
The source said the head of Najib's defence team Muhammad Shafee Abdullah (above) was concerned that the documents in the CD may be incomplete, which would slow down the defence team in their preparation.
"They need to see the full documents so they can evaluate how strong is the case. And this includes seeing how credible are the witnesses."
The source added that the team may be running out of time as they have to conduct a "post-mortem" on the documents before the start of the trial which is expected in November.
"Why did they (the prosecution team) do this to the defence team? Do they have the ill-intention to deliberately slow down the defence team?" he asked.
Three counts
Yesterday, Shafee lamented that the defence team had requested for the documents several times in advance.
Najib has claimed trial to three charges under Section 4(1)(b) of the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001, with four earlier charges being amended.
He is charged with three counts of money laundering with regards to three deposits into his AmIslamic Bank account between Dec 26, 2014, and Feb 10, 2015. The deposits were RM27 million, RM5 million and RM10 million respectively.
Under the Act, Najib stands to face a jail term of 15 years and a fine amounting to five times the money laundered if convicted. -Mkini
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