KUALA LUMPUR: \u00a0The High Court on Wednesday set April 18 for its decision on the appeal of former Sabah Infrastructure Development Minister Datuk Peter Anthony to set aside his conviction and three-year prison sentence and a fine of RM50,000 for forgery of letters related to a\u00a0maintenance and service contract at Universiti Malaysia\u00a0Sabah (UMS).
\nJudge Datuk Ahmad Bache fixed the date after listening to submissions from lawyer S. Devanandan representing\u00a0Peter as the appellant and deputy public prosecutor Datuk Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin.
\nEarlier Devanandan argued that the letter regarding the M&E System maintenance and service contract at UMS was signed by the eighth prosecution witness (SP8), UMS deputy vice-chancellor (Academic & International) Prof\u00a0Dr Shariff Abdul Kadir S. Omang and not the appellant.
\n“SP8 in his testimony confirmed that he signed the letter on behalf of UMS vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Mohamad Harun Abdullah (SP1), but SP1 in his testimony said that he had never authorised SP8 to sign the letter.
\n“As such, the appellant is not involved in this matter and I request that the appellant’s appeal to\u00a0set aside his conviction and sentence be allowed by the court,” he said.
\nWan Shaharuddin meanwhile, argued that the trial judge had examined that there were\u00a0circumstantial evidence\u00a0in convicting the accused, namely, who stands to gain if the maintenance project was awarded to any party and who had the opportunity to forge letters related to the project.<\/p>\n
“The trial judge found that the element of forgery was completed when the letter was handed over to the late Datuk Azlin Alias who was then principal private secretary to former\u00a0prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.
\n“This shows that the appellant (Peter) is the ‘maker’ of the letter and not SP8,” he said.
\nAccording to Wan Shaharuddin, the appellant knew that the project was offered through\u00a0an open tender\u00a0but he had cheated and intended to hijack\u00a0the project.
\n“When defending himself, the accused himself admitted that it is a common practice to hijack\u00a0projects in this country, even though they are offered through an open tender. This is\u00a0very sad and as such, the prosecution urge that the court reject the appellant’s appeal and uphold the conviction and sentence against him,” said Wan Shaharuddin.
\nIn June last year, Peter, 52, filed an appeal against the prison sentence and fine handed down by Sessions Court Judge Azura Alwi on May 26, 2022 after finding him guilty of the charge.
\nPeter, as the managing director of\u00a0Syarikat Asli Jati Sdn Bhd, was charged with falsifying a letter from the office of UMS deputy vice-chancellor\u00a0dated\u00a0June 9, 2014 which included false statements with the intention to deceive.
\nThe offence committed in the office of the\u00a0principal private secretary to the\u00a0prime minister at Perdana\u00a0Putra building, Putrajaya between June 13 and Aug 21, 2014 was framed under Section 468 of the Penal Code which provides for a maximum prison sentence of seven years and a fine.
\nThe Parti Kesejahteraan Demokratik Malaysia (KDM) chief\u00a0has paid the\u00a0RM50,000 fine.
\n— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KUALA LUMPUR: \u00a0The High Court on Wednesday set April 18 for its decision on the appeal of former Sabah Infrastructure Development Minister Datuk Peter Anthony to set aside his conviction and three-year prison sentence and a fine of RM50,000 for forgery of letters related to a\u00a0maintenance and service contract at Universiti Malaysia\u00a0Sabah (UMS). Judge Datuk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":19171,"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-19170","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\/19170","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=19170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19172,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19170\/revisions\/19172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}