KUALA LUMPUR: The Sessions Court here today allowed an application by\u00a0former Sabah Infrastructure Development Minister Datuk Peter Anthony for stay of his sentence and conviction on a charge with forging a document for the purpose of cheating.
\nJudge Azura Alwi allowed the application based on \u00a0grounds given by the applicant in his affidavits, as well as in the written and oral submissions submitted by both parties earlier.
\nIn allowing the application, she ordered the\u00a0bail imposed on Peter, 51, to be increased from RM50,000 to RM80,000, and following a request by Peter\u2019s counsel,\u00a0S. Devanandan, allowed the\u00a0remaining\u00a0 RM30,000 in bail payment \u00a0to be settled before or on Aug\u00a03.
\nLast May 26,\u00a0 Peter was sentenced to three years\u2019 jail and a fine of RM50,000, in default 15 months\u2019 jail,\u00a0\u00a0after he was found guilty of forging a letter for a Mechanical and Electrical Systems (M&E) maintenance\u00a0work at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS).
\nHe applied for a stay of the sentence and conviction and on\u00a0July 28, deputy public prosecutor Datuk Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin objected to the\u00a0application on grounds that it was without merit and contravened the law.
\nIn his submission on that day, he\u00a0 said the stay of the conviction could only be allowed if there was \u00a0a ‘clerical error’ as stated in Section 278 of the Criminal Procedure Code (KTJ).
\n“Clearly, there was no ‘clerical error’ and therefore the request by the defence for stay of the execution of the conviction is baseless at this stage,” he said.
\nMeanwhile, Devanandan submitted that\u00a0his client\u2019s application for a stay of conviction and sentence\u00a0had\u00a0merit and was made with the same reason used in the case of\u00a0\u00a0Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, namely to contest in the 15th General Election (GE15) on the grounds that there were special circumstances according to Section 311 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
\n“If the application is not allowed, the applicant, who is also the President of Parti Kesejahteraan Demokratik Masyarakat (KDM), which is a political party in Sabah,\u00a0 cannot contest in the coming GE15.
\n“We do not know when Parliament will be dissolved. If not allowed, the applicant will be disqualified to contest\u00a0 and this will prejudice him.
\n\u201cTherefore, this conviction has to be stayed temporarily\u00a0to allow him to contest,\u201d he added.
\nMeanwhile, deputy public prosecutor Haresh Prakash Somiah, when met today, said the High Court had\u00a0 set\u00a0 Sept 19 for case management of Peter’s appeal to set aside the conviction and sentence handed down by the Sessions Court last \u00a026 May.
\n— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KUALA LUMPUR: The Sessions Court here today allowed an application by\u00a0former Sabah Infrastructure Development Minister Datuk Peter Anthony for stay of his sentence and conviction on a charge with forging a document for the purpose of cheating. Judge Azura Alwi allowed the application based on \u00a0grounds given by the applicant in his affidavits, as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":14313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14314,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14312\/revisions\/14314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}