PUTRAJAYA (Jan 6): The Court of Appeal (COA) on Friday (Jan 6) rescheduled Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor’s appeal hearing over her conviction and sentence in the solar hybrid graft case to July 11 from the original date on June 22.
The appellate court also allowed the defence's application to fix an additional two days from the original date, making the hearing of the appeal fixed for four days between July 11 and 14.
Rosmah’s counsels Datuk Jagjit Singh and Datuk Akberdin Abdul Kader attended the case management while deputy public prosecutor Poh Yin Tinn appeared for the prosecution.
Poh confirmed the outcome of the case management, which was done before COA deputy registrar Mohd Khairi Haron.
Originally, last month the COA had fixed June 22 and 23 to hear Rosmah’s appeal against her conviction and sentence, and the defence requested more days.
Akberdin, when contacted, confirmed the rescheduling of the hearing of the appeals and the reason was the defence needed more time to also submit on their client’s failed bid to recuse High Court judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan before he delivered the decision.
“Hence, we asked for a four-day hearing,” Akberdin said.
This resulted in the rescheduling of the appeal.
Following that, Khairi directed parties to file their written submissions by June 9 and the reply to the written submissions on June 23.
There will be a final case management for the appeal on July 4.
Rosmah, 71, the wife of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, had on Sept 1 last year been found guilty by the High Court on all three counts of graft in relation to the solar hybrid graft case involving 364 rural schools in Sarawak.
Zaini found her found guilty of soliciting RM187.5 million from Jepak Holdings Sdn Bhd's former managing director Saidi Abang Samsudin for being awarded the RM1.25 billion project by the Ministry of Education between April and August 2016.
She was also found guilty of receiving RM5 million and RM1.5 million from Saidi at her private residence in Jalan Langgak Duta and then at the prime minister's official residence in Seri Perdana between Dec 20, 2016 and Sept 7, 2017.
All three charges were framed under Section 16(a)(A) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act.
For this, Zaini sentenced Rosmah to 10 years' jail and a whopping RM970 million fine.
Rosmah has filed some 127 grounds in her appeal against the conviction and sentence.
In finding her guilty and sentencing her, Zaini ruled that Rosmah’s defence had failed to create doubts to her three charges, and warned that if corruption is not controlled, it would reach all levels of society.