UMNO president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has filed a defamation suit against Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for claiming that the former had sought the former premier’s help to drop his corruption charges.
This is over Mahathir’s claim that Zahid had met him to try and get on his good side as the latter anticipated that he would be facing criminal charges.
This had reportedly occurred before Mahathir took office in 2018 when he said it was clear he would become prime minister.
Mahathir made the allegations at a press conference at the Perdana Leadership Foundation in Putrajaya on Feb 23.
He was responding to a question on whether Zahid had met him while he was prime minister to discuss the latter’s corruption court cases.
Zahid, in his statement of claim filed last week, denied ever meeting the Pejuang chairperson to discuss his court cases or any action by enforcement agencies prior to the latter becoming prime minister.
According to an Free Malaysia Today (FMT) report, Zahid claimed that the words uttered by Mahathir were “untrue, unwarranted, unsubstantiated and mischievous”, noting that the words meant that he was resorting to shortcuts to resolve his criminal cases for personal interests.
Zahid also said that by innuendo the words implied that he had a bad image and that he did not respect the authorities or the justice system.
Further, they meant that as an MP and the most senior UMNO leader, he could not be trusted in his actions or decisions, and that he had wanted to use his position to influence the then-prime minister to meddle in the investigations.
In the suit filed at the High Court here last week through the firm of Messrs Shahrul Hamidi and Haziq, Zahid is seeking an injunction to stop Mahathir from repeating his claims, as well as aggravated, general and exemplary damages.
Zahid is facing 47 charges with 12 of these involving CBT, eight for corruption and 27 for money laundering involving tens of millions of ringgit of Yayasan Akalbudi funds.
On Jan 24, the court ordered Zahid to make his defence against all the charges after the prosecution managed to prove a prima facie case against him. – April 27, 2022
