KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 24): UMNO president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s lawyers contended that due to her carelessness in performing her duties, his former secretary Major Mazlina Mazlan is to blame for using funds from the charitable foundation Yayasan Akalbudi to pay off his personal credit card bills, motor insurance policies and road taxes.

“Mazlina is the cause of the [criminal breach of trust] charges; she is the cause. She is not a scapegoat. She is a culprit. Her negligence is the reason why Zahid is being charged today,” said his lawyer Hamidi Mohd Noh during the trial on Wednesday.

Hamidi said on Wednesday that Mazlina acted negligently because Zahid had never given her “blanket approval” to make payments via cheques for his expenses.

“There was no approval given to make payments. It was her presumption that a blanket approval was given [by Zahid for the payments],” he told Justice Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah while submitting on his client’s behalf at the end of the prosecution’s case.

He said that Mazlina, who is the 90th witness in the trial, had overpaid his credit cards several times even before their due date and said that this was “ridiculous and unheard of”.

“It’s not one late payment, there was overpayment, and underpayment and paying cards that were not due. In one instance she overpaid a credit card by RM55,000. This is ridiculous and unheard of,” he said.

Last month, during the prosecution's submissions, Deputy Public Prosecutor Datuk Raja Rozela Raja Toran said that regardless of her negligence and incompetence, Mazlina had carried out Zahid’s instructions to issue cheques from Yayasan Akalbudi to pay Zahid’s personal bills.

“You may find that she is a careless and an incompetent secretary, but we must not lose sight of the fact that she was carrying out Zahid’s instructions. Whether signed cheques or stamped, whether to pay credit cards or road tax, she had prepared the cheques on his instruction,” the prosecutor said.

“We aren’t here to check her ability to understand or her secretary skills. We are here to check whether she issued the cheque with the permission and knowledge of the accused,” Raja Rozela submitted.

Hamidi on Wednesday, however, insisted that Mazlina had stamped Zahid’s signature — as the foundation’s trustee and sole signatory — onto the cheques without his approval or knowledge.

“We are not telling the world that she is a scapegoat. Why would I want to make her a scapegoat? She is the reason he is here. She is the reason,” he said.

Hamidi said the court should “take one step further” in determining Mazlina’s credibility as a witness and corroborate her evidence.

Raja Rozela had previously said the court does not need to corroborate Mazlina’s evidence, as she is not being tried as an accomplice to Zahid.

Hamidi was submitting on Zahid’s 12 CBT charges in relation to charitable foundation Yayasan Akalbudi’s funds.

The 12 charges entail 52 Yayasan Akalbudi cheques, including 34 with Zahid’s signature stamped on them. Of these, 10 carried Zahid’s pre-signed signature while 44 of the 52 cheques were for credit card payments.

Hamidi then zeroed in on Raja Rozela’s closing remarks during submissions where she said that Zahid was not thinking of the poor when he went on shopping sprees and that “not a single cent” went to the poor as per the mandate of Yayasan Akalbudi.

“The prosecution said that ‘not a single cent went to the poor’, however the trustees said otherwise when they took the witness stand in the case,” he said.

“They also questioned him if he ‘had the poor in his mind’ when he and his wife went shopping.

“We are offended by such prejudicial comments,” he said.

Zahid and his wife had allegedly spent some RM1.3 million of Yayasan Akalbudi funds to pay off credit cards for shopping sprees at Giorgio Armani, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes as contended by the prosecution.

The prosecution also claimed that he had misappropriated the funds for wrongful and personal gain.

Zahid is facing 47 total charges, of which 12 are for criminal breach of trust, eight for corruption and 27 for money laundering involving tens of millions of ringgit belonging to the foundation.