A senior lawyer has filed three new applications for the High Court to review the Sessions Court’s discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA) of Najib Abdul Razak’s stepson Riza Aziz over a 1MDB-linked US$248 money laundering case.
This came on the heels of the Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan having dismissed an earlier similar revision application by the same legal practitioner, Shaharudin Ali (photo, above).
Speaking to Malaysiakini recently, Shaharudin said that on May 31 he had emailed the three revision applications to three other High Court judges in Kuala Lumpur, namely Justices Collin Lawrence Sequerah, Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali and Rozana Ali Yusoff.
The veteran lawyer said that he was seeking the three judges’ “individual intervention to call for the record of the lower court that made the DNAA order”.
He said: “In my earlier application, the learned judge (Justice Zaini) did not even call for the Sessions Court’s record, before dismissing my application summarily and without assigning any reason whatsoever for doing so.
“I hope one of the judges (Sequerah, Nazlan or Rozana) will call up the file and decide the matter according to the law.”
'No revision proceedings had ever taken place'
Asked whether he could still make a similar application to the High Court despite an earlier High Court judge having dismissed his application, Shaharudin pointed out that arguably, no revision proceedings had ever taken place as Justice Zaini had just dismissed it without giving reasons and that it was never determined based on its own merits.
According to a copy of the emailed revision application sent to Justice Sequerah that was sighted by Malaysiakini, Shaharudin stated that the reading of the phrase “A judge” from Section 323 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code indicated any “available” High Court (Criminal Jurisdiction) judge, who can and who is suitable for the matter to be brought to his attention.
Section 323 (1) states that “a judge may call for and examine the record of any proceeding before any subordinate criminal court for the purpose of satisfying himself as to the correctness, legality or propriety of any finding, sentence or order recorded or passed, and as to the regularity of any proceedings of that subordinate court.”
Shaharudin said that it does not mean a “certain or specific judge only” as that “would read into the section something that Parliament had never intended”.
“Furthermore, how could His Honourable Judge (in reference to Justice Zaini) dismiss my letter dated May 20, 2020, without at all calling up the case record of Riza Aziz (above) to ‘satisfying himself as to the correctness, legality or propriety of any finding, sentence or order recorded or passed, as to the regularity of any proceedings of that subordinate court’?
“These are matters that need to be submitted on in greater detail.
“There has been no ‘Revision’ case such as this before and this has yet to be tested. With respect, there is no clear precedent before,” Shaharudin added.
On May 14, the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court granted the DNAA to Hollywood film producer Riza in relation to the 1MDB-linked US$248 million money laundering case.
The DNAA of the stepson of former prime minister Najib has attracted mixed reactions from various quarters, with former attorney-general Tommy Thomas having issued several denials over greenlighting the DNAA deal between the prosecution and Riza.
However, current Attorney-General Idrus Harun said Thomas had agreed in principle to the DNAA deal and that he (Idrus) merely proceeded with the deal due to that.
On May 14, the MACC had issued a statement that the DNAA deal was secured during Thomas’ stint as AG.
The anti-graft watchdog’s chief commissioner Azam Baki was reported by online news portal Free Malaysia Today as saying that the MACC was standing by its May 14 statement. - Mkini
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