By Dorcas Ting
KUCHING, Sept 4: The Magistrate’s Court here dismissed the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) remand application on three senior state government officers and a businessman, today.
The individuals, aged between 52 and 67, were arrested by MACC at around 5pm yesterday after they were brought to the anti-graft agency’s office in Kuching to be interviewed by officers.
The 59-year-old businessman was represented by Counsel Shankar Ram, while the 67-year-old most senior officer was represented by Counsel Roger Chin. The other two were jointly represented by Shankar and Chin.
Prosecuting officer Mohd Ikhwan Mohd Pauzi applied to remand the four suspects for seven days, but their counsels rejected the application on the ground that the prosecuting officer did not state the specific grounds for the seven days remand application.
Both parties argued over whether to allow MACC’s remand application of the four suspects for about an hour, before Magistrate Mohd Syukri Mokhtar ordered the counsels to stand down for 15 minutes for the prosecuting officer to prepare the grounds to apply for remand.
According to Section 117 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the prosecuting officer must provide the ground to apply for suspects to be remanded.
The prosecuting officer also raised that this is a high profile case, so the four suspects have to be remanded.
Counsel Chin then replied, “what case could have a higher profile than 1MDB case? And the accused of this case was not even remanded”. — DayakDaily
