Company director stops short of admitting that he gave Ahmad Zahid a RM2mil bribe
Wednesday, 27 Nov 20197:01 PM MYT
By HANIS ZAINAL
image: https://apicms.thestar.com.my/uploads/images/2019/11/27/407708.jpg
KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi's (pic) criminal case for corruption was brought up during a civil suit hearing here, when a company director stopped short of admitting that he gave a RM2mil bribe to the former deputy prime minister.
Profound Radiance Sdn Bhd (PRSB) director Azlan Shah Jaffril, 48, was answering questions from Datuk R.S. Sodhi, lawyer to plaintiff and former PRSB director Nor Rosnani Ibrahim, during the hearing of a civil suit she had brought against Azlan Shah and the company at the High Court on Wednesday (Nov 27).
Sodhi: I put it to you that the three offences Ahmad Zahid were charged with was in respect to receiving RM2mil in bribes from you?
Azlan Shah: Yes, that was what (he) has been charged (with).
High Court Judicial Commissioner Ong Chee Kwan, however, interrupted the line of questioning to ask why this was relevant to the civil suit.
"Will you go further or is this random?" Ong asked, to which Sodhi stopped his questions on the matter.
It was mentioned in court that Azlan Shah will be a witness for prosecution for Ahmad Zahid's ongoing bribery trial.
Azlan Shah went on to say that he had donated money (of an unspecified sum) to a mosque every month as told to by "officers" in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for the reinstatement of a contract for his company, which was a one-stop visa processing centre.
"I did seek assistance from officers in PMO after the contract was terminated.
"The only person that I believed who could assist me to reinstate (the contract) was the prime minister, because the instruction (to revoke the contract) came from the (then) deputy prime minister.
"So many parties assisted; (but) they said, 'we don't want any money from you, just donate to this mosque every month'," he said.
Azlan Shah said this after Sodhi asked him why he had given money from the company's coffers to a mosque in Tapah.
Azlan Shah, in his witness statement, said that the Home Affairs Ministry had revoked PRSB's contract on Nov 11,2015.
"After the appointment was revoked, I continued to engage the ministry on my own initiative and my contacts with Ahmad Zahid," he said.
Ahmad Zahid was also the home affairs minister at that time.
He added that the company was awarded a contract to process the voluntary reparation of illegal foreign workers (Pati) and visa applications for Nepal and Pakistan in mid-2016 after a series of negotiations with the ministry.
In a suit filed on May 8,2019, Nor Rosnani, 43, alleged that Azlan Shah had breached an agreement that he would re-transfer 30% of the shares in PRSB to the plaintiff (Nor Rosnani).
Nor Rosnani, in her statement of claim, said that she transferred the 30% shares to him with the agreement that he would re-transfer the shares to her, after the defendant (Azlan Shah) had managed to resolve an issue regarding the company's operations in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Nor Rosnani in her suit also claimed that Azlan Shah had reneged on his agreement that he would distribute the revenue from PRSB's operations to shareholders, including the plaintiff (Nor Rosnani), according to their respective shareholdings.
The hearing of the civil suit will continue on Friday, Nov 29.
Read more at https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/11/27/company-director-stops-short-of-admitting-that-he-gave-ahmad-zahid-a-rm2mil-bribe#1ohdw65eP0w8tQOi.99
