Ex-Bar president: “File legal challenge against Pardons Board over Najib’s jail sentence”

FORMER Malaysian Bar president Zainur Zakaria has called for the incoming Bar Council members to file a legal challenge against the Pardons Board over its decision to halve ex-premier Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s jail sentence for his SRC International corruption case.

Zainur who was president from 1993 to 1995 said the Federal Territories Pardons Board had “acted ultra vires under Article 42 of the Federal Constitution” in slashing the Najib’s 12-year jail sentence to six years as well as reducing the RM210 mil fine to RM50 mil.

“He has only served one-and-a-half years of his jail sentence, and hence his application for a pardon ought not to have been processed and determined in the first place,” he was reported as saying by FMT in his motion submitted for the Bar’s annual general meeting on Saturday.

Zainur further argued that Najib had “never shown any remorse or contrition as to his involvement in the 1MDB affairs” and continued to claim that the court had not treated him fairly.

Recall that the Pardons Board’s decision to commute the former Pekan MP’s sentence had previously sparked calls for reform in Malaysia’s institutions, specifically the Pardons Board.

In a statement on Feb 7, Bar Council president Karen Cheah Yee Lynn said that to prevent the influence of the Executive and ensure independence in the pardons process, the government’s role in the Pardons Board should be reduced, if not “completely eliminated”.

Cheah said to this end, an amendment is required to remove the influence of the Attorney General and the Federal Territories Minister or Chief Ministers of States in the Pardons Board and to appoint independent persons to the Pardons Board to ensure inclusivity in terms of expressions from the public.

Cheah said a further reform to the Pardons Board would be to introduce safeguards that ensure such power is exercised sparingly as well as within clear boundaries and established circumstances or categories.

She further noted that remorse and repentance must be a substantial part of such exercise, and that to date, during his incarceration, Najib “has yet to show remorse, any form of repentance, nor apology for committing the offences of criminal breach of trust, abuse of power and money laundering, for which he was convicted”.

Najib, 70, was tried, and on July 28, 2020, convicted in the Kuala Lumpur High Court on seven counts of abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust involving RM42 mil in funds belonging to SRC International, a former subsidiary of 1MDB.

His conviction and sentence were subsequently affirmed by the Court of Appeal on Dec 8, 2021 and by the Federal Court the following year. – March 12, 2024

 

Main pic credit: Bernama

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