This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on February 9, 2018 - February 15, 2018

PUTRAJAYA: The Court of Appeal yesterday set Feb 21 to announce its decision on whether to proceed with sentencing in the Genneva Sdn Bhd case, or cancel the conviction made and allow a rehearing of the appeal.

The court decided this after a defence counsel argued that convicting the gold investment firm and its four former directors based on the original 224 counts of money laundering may be illegal.

The 224 charges against Genneva, Datuk Chin Wai Leong, 42, Ng Poh Weng, 68, Marcus Yee Yuen Seng, 66, and Liew Chee Wah, 64, were reduced to 156 yesterday after it was established that there were 68 overlapping charges.

This came about after both the defence and prosecution teams combed through the charges made under the Banking and Financial Institutions Act 1989 (Bafia) and Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 (Amla).

The court learnt that discrepancies in the charges were due to offences that were said to have been committed under Amla, prior to the predicate offence of receiving and taking deposits under Bafia, whereas duplicity of charges occurred where one charge had two counts of conviction.

The three-man panel led by Justice Mohtarudin Baki, with Datuk Seri Zakaria Sam and Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil being the other two members of the panel, ordered the lawyers to send written submissions before Feb 15 based on the reduced number of charges, following which the panel will make its decision known.

Earlier, Chin’s counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told the court that it should not mete out a sentence based on the original 224 charges.

“I appeal for the court to vary the charges, and remit the appeal to a fresh hearing with a new quorum (panel). Why should this panel be implicated by the irregularity? The defence officially made its submission based on 224 charges and you have convicted. If you carry on, and persist with the illegality, this would be serious transgression of judicial power.

“[However,] can the court remit the matter on the purity of judicial powers and jurisdiction? We cannot blame the panel because we ourselves were misled,” Shafee added.

Mohtarudin said he found it difficult to accept the argument by the defence as the judges had looked at the evidence, and the money trail was allegedly there before they decided on the conviction last December.

He sounded the prosecution team for “messing up” the charges while chiding the defence team for not raising the irregularity during the appeals submission last year.

The lawyers, however, claimed that it was not an issue in the High Court, and that they were not aware of the overlapping charges until they were presented a copy recently.

The appeals court on Dec 12 found Genneva, Chin, Ng, Yee and Liew guilty based on 224 counts of money laundering. They were also convicted on five counts of illegal deposit-taking, involving more than RM100 million.

Besides Shafee, Chin was also represented by Datuk Nicholas Kow, Emile Ezra Hussain and Reny Rao. Counsel Keppy Wong appeared for Liew, and Gooi Soon Seng for Yee, Ng and Genneva.

The prosecution team was led by DPP Hamdan Hamzah who submitted that the current panel of judges should carry on with sentencing because the Sessions Court and High Court had already heard the matter based on the original charges.

Outside the courtroom, Chin told The Edge Financial Daily that he was tired as he had been subjected to investigation and litigation since 2009.

“I have been suffering for eight years. I am not running anywhere [because] my business is genuine,” he said while indicating that he is pleased that the number of charges has been reduced.

Bank Negara Malaysia began investigations into Genneva in July 2009 on suspicion of illegal deposit-taking activities. The company and four ex-directors were later charged in the Sessions Court.

The court acquitted them in May 2013, and the decision was subsequently upheld by the High Court in September 2016. The prosecution had then appealed to the Court of Appeal.