MACC to fight legal challenge to Shafie Apdal’s remand
(FMT) – The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has vowed to counter a legal challenge against Parti Warisan Sabah president Shafie Apdal’s remand in connection with alleged misappropriation of rural development funds from the time he was a federal minister.
“We will fight the motion tomorrow in the Kota Kinabalu High Court,” MACC prosecutor Mohd Faliq Basiruddin told FMT today without giving further details.
The Malaysian Insight today reported that Shafie’s lawyers will challenge the remand of the opposition party leader, saying that the order had been in contravention of the MACC Act 2009.
The motion filed by Shafie’s lawyers reportedly stated three reasons for the supposedly flawed remand order.
One of them was that the remand application had been made under the Penal Code instead of the MACC Act.
Shafie was arrested on Oct 19 over the probe into alleged misappropriation of RM1.5 billion of funds from projects in Sabah during his tenure as rural and regional development minister from 2009 to 2015.
The former Umno vice-president was remanded on Friday for four days. The MACC is expected to request for an extension of the remand order tomorrow.
He was the eleventh person to be arrested by the anti-graft agency in its ongoing investigation, with two of his younger brothers, Yusof and Hamid, among those arrested earlier.
Hamid and his son-in-law Manzur Hussein Awal Khan were also remanded but have since been released on bail.
The remand order on Yusof, who is Umno’s Lahad Datu assemblyman, will expire tomorrow as well.
Other Warisan leaders who were detained and later released were vice-president Peter Anthony and Youth chief Azis Jamman.
Two former secretaries of Shafie, who were arrested in Putrajaya, have also been remanded.
It was earlier reported that the MACC was scrutinising a total of 72 projects out of an original list of 350 under the ministry for suspected embezzlement of funds.
The projects were planned to be carried out between 2009 and 2015 in Kota Kinabalu, Kudat, Kota Belud, Ranau, Beaufort, Keningau, Lahad Datu, Tawau and Sandakan.
The RM1.5 billion was said to be part of RM7.5 billion allocated for water, electricity and road infrastructure development projects.
Some RM170 million in bank accounts and assets of the companies involved in the projects have reportedly been frozen.
More than 45 people have been questioned since the probe began two weeks ago.
Opposition leaders claimed the investigation was politically motivated to smear the image of Warisan ahead of the 14th general election, but Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and the MACC have denied this, insisting that the agency operated independently.
