Najib Abdul Razak’s application to recuse former federal court judge Gopal Sri Ram from prosecuting the former prime minister’s 1MDB audit report tampering case will be heard on Jan 27.
The accused’s defence counsel Nur Syahirah Hanapiah said that the new hearing date was fixed by the Kuala Lumpur High Court today.
She said that the initially scheduled hearing of Najib’s recusal application before judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan this morning was vacated due to lead defence counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah being on medical leave.
“Shafee is on MC (medical chit) today because of the condition of his hand. So today’s hearing was vacated and converted into case management before deputy registrar Catherine Nicholas.
“The court has then fixed Jan 27 for the hearing at 9.30am to disqualify Sri Ram from being senior DPP in (Najib’s) 1MDB audit report trial,” Nur Syahirah said.
She was speaking to the media after having earlier attended the case management before Catherine.
When met after attending the same proceedings, DPP Mohamad Mustaffa P Kunyalam confirmed that the hearing date of Najib’s recusal application has been postponed Jan 27.
“We will respond accordingly (against the recusal application during the Jan 27 hearing),” the DPP said.
Initially, the High Court has fixed hearing of the recusal application on Oct 16 last year.
However, since then, the hearing has been postponed a few times due to the Conditional Movement Control Order (MCO) imposed on the Klang Valley on Oct 14 to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On June 12 last year, it was reported that Najib has filed an application to disqualify Sri Ram as special prosecutor for the former prime minister's 1MDB audit report tampering trial.
Shafee was quoted as saying that the recusal application was backed with an affidavit by former attorney-general (AG) Mohamed Apandi Ali, among others.
The recusal application came on the heels of an allegation by Apandi, who himself was also a former Federal Court judge, that Sri Ram had tried to coax him to play a role to arrest Najib.
In a posting on his Facebook last year, Apandi claimed that Sri Ram had approached him at his house in January 2018, supposedly under the instruction of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
In the ongoing trial, Najib is charged with using his position to order amendments to 1MDB's final audit report before it was presented to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and to prevent any action against him.
Co-accused and former 1MDB chief executive officer Arul Kanda Kandasamy is charged with abetting Najib in making the amendments.
The charges are framed under Section 23 (1) of the MACC Act 2009, which specifies a jail term of up to 20 years and a fine of no less than five times the amount of gratification or RM10,000, whichever is higher, upon conviction.
Najib has previously filed multiple bids at separate courts to recuse Sri Ram from prosecuting in the 1MDB-linked criminal cases.
Among these legal bids was the one on Aug 28, when the Kuala Lumpur High Court dismissed Najib's judicial review application that sought to disqualify Sri Ram from prosecuting in these trials. - Mkini
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