KUALA LUMPUR (March 29): A Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officer testified in court on Tuesday that the RM9.5 million lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah received between 2013 and 2014 from Datuk Seri Najib Razak was for work Shafee performed for Barisan Nasional (BN) in 46 election petition cases from 2004 to 2006.

The officer, Mohamad Farid Jabar, said that he lodged the MACC report to investigate Shafee for receiving the money from Najib in 2018 and for not declaring this income to the Inland Revenue Board (IRB).

Farid is the last prosecution witness in Shafee's trial in which the latter faces two charges under the Income Tax Act 1967 for being involved in transactions of proceeds from unlawful activities and for making inaccurate statements to the IRB by not declaring the payments he received in his 2014 or 2015 tax returns.

"The RM9.5 million was the legal fees for Shafee in representing Barisan Nasional in 46 election petition cases from 2004 to 2006," he said, reading from his witness testimony before Judge Datuk Jamil Hussin.

"The [payments were] an accrued income and [were] taxable. [They were] not reported to IRB," he said.

He said that Najib had passed Shafee two cheques of RM4.3 million and RM5.2 million, which he said Shafee received between Sept 13, 2013 and Feb 17, 2014 on two separate occasions at the prime minister's office.

Previously, Shafee had also clarified that the money he received was for election petitions and not for the task of being the lead prosecutor in Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's Sodomy II appeals.

He claimed that the amount he was owed was RM1,000 as the consideration amount of his July 19, 2013 contract for the appointment.

"For purposes of record, I have never taken a single cent from the government of Malaysia or anybody else in relation to my undertaking of the prosecution of the appeals. I must stress that even the RM1,000 was never claimed by me to date," he said in a six-page statement in 2018 as reported by the Malay Mail.

At the time, Anwar questioned these payments which were allegedly made during the time frame when Shafee was acting as the lead prosecutor in the Sodomy II appeals.

Shafee also faces two additional money laundering charges involving the RM9.5 million. The prosecution alleged that he had breached Section 4(1)(a) of AMLA by receiving proceeds from unlawful activities.

Earlier in the day, IRB officer Syed Nasrul Fahmi Syed Mohamad testified that the IRB had commenced civil action against Shafee and as such, did not need to record statements from Najib or any other BN party representative about the receipts of said funds.

The trial will continue on April 27 when Farid will be cross-examined. After that the prosecution's case will be wrapped up.