KUALA LUMPUR: The sessions court here has fixed Jan 9 to rule on whether to proceed with former Penang chief minister Lim Guan Eng’s bid to impeach the star witness in his undersea tunnel corruption trial.
Judge Azura Alwi said she needed time to look into businessman Zarul Ahmad Zulkifli’s 108-page statement recorded by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in 2018.
Lawyer Gobind Singh Deo, appearing for Lim, indicated to the court that they wanted a copy of Zarul’s statement, so they can highlight any “discrepancies”.
Azura then said she will decide on whether there are discrepancies in Zarul’s statement.
Earlier this month, the court allowed Lim to commence impeachment proceedings against Zarul. His lawyers claimed Zarul gave “conflicting” statements to MACC over a purported RM2 million payment.
Last month, Zarul testified that in 2017, he paid out a total of RM4 million to Lim and then prime minister Najib Razak.
The payment was part of kickbacks Lim is alleged to have received from the tunnel project, he said.
He also claimed the other RM2 million was intended for Najib as he thought the former prime minister would be in a position to “influence” MACC to close investigations against him.
Lim is standing trial on charges of using his position to ask Zarul for a 10% cut of the profits from the undersea tunnel project, and accepting RM3.3 million from the businessman.
He is also accused of two counts of dishonestly misappropriating RM208.7 million worth of state land to two companies. - FMT
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