KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 30): The hearing of the appeal against the acquittal of Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in the foreign visa (VLN) system bribery case has been postponed yet again, as he will be on official duty overseas.
It is learnt that the hearing will now take place on Dec 12, instead of Sept 9, which was the date the Court of Appeal had previously set.
A case management for the matter took place on Friday. It is understood that the defence had asked for an adjournment as Zahid would be at a conference in China during that period.
The parties involved were then informed of Court of Appeal president Tan Sri Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim's instruction that no further adjournments would be granted for the appeal after this.
The apellate court had already given them an earful in March for taking up the court's time when Zahid's lawyers requested an adjournment to accord the attorney general more time to study a new set of representations sent a month before.
Zahid had sent a series of representations to persuade the AG to drop the prosecution's appeal against the Shah Alam High Court's decision in September 2022 to acquit the Umno president of 40 counts of graft in the VLN bribery case without calling for his defence.
The 40 counts of graft comprised 33 charges under Section 16(A)(B) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act, and seven charges under Section 165 of the Penal Code.
Judge Datuk Mohd Yazid Mustafa, who has since retired, ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove a prima facie case, and questioned the size of the brown envelope that Ultra Kirana Sdn Bhd directors Harry Lee Vui Khiun and Wan Quoris Shah Wan Abdul Ghani, as well as former administrative manager David Tan Siong Sun, had purportedly used to deliver foreign currencies, mainly Singapore dollars, to Zahid.
Yazid further said their evidence for the delivery of cash was not corroborated, as there were no CCTV recordings or pictures tendered, unlike in Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor’s corruption case, in which independent witnesses testified on the delivery of millions of cash in bags.
Zahid had already been granted a discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA) in August last year over 47 counts of criminal breach of trust, graft and laundering of Yayasan Akalbudi funds that he faced.
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