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Tuesday 17 February 2015

Case against Najib, Rosmah may never take off

Americk says objections deliberately raised to “wear out my client financially".

FMT

KUALA LUMPUR: The family of the late P Balasubramanian may never get the chance to prove their case that they were the victims of a tortious conspiracy involving Prime Minister Najib Razak, his wife Rosmah Mansor and seven others, which forced them to leave Malaysia for almost five years between 2008 and 2013.

According to a report in the Malaysian Insider today, Americk Sidhu, the lawyer of Balasubramanian’s wife Santamil, is alleging that the respondents have raised certain objections to the effect that the appeal was defective and ought not to be heard on its merits.

One of the objections was that the family ought to have filed seven separate notices of appeal since the defendants had separate law firms acting for them and each law firm had filed a separate striking out application.

According to Americk, only one notice was filed because the High Court had delivered one decision on December 11 last year which had disposed of all the applications.

Refuting the suggestion that multiple notices ought to have been filed, Americk said, “This is absurd and is an attempt to wear out my client financially because every notice of appeal must be accompanied by RM1,000.00 in deposit.”

“I will raise this issue before the Court of Appeal Registrar to ensure her appeal is heard without any hindrance,” he added.

Balasubramanian was the private investigator caught up in events leading to the October 2006 murder of Mongolian socialite Altantuya Shaariibuu and had famously affirmed two statutory declarations one day apart from each other under circumstances which have yet to be satisfactorily explained.

In a lengthy first Statutory Declaration which he affirmed on July 1, 2008, Bala had suggested that Najib and Abdul Razak Baginda had known Altantuya and may have been involved in events immediately preceding her murder.

He, however, retracted the entire contents of that statutory declaration in a statutory declaration which he affirmed the very next day claiming that it had been made under “inducement and threat”.

Bala passed away on May 15, 2013, only two months after he and his family returned from exile.

The lawsuit was commenced by his family in the High Court June 2014, despite the fact that no letters of administration had been issued in respect of his estate at the time.

In striking the suit without trial, High Court Judge Hasnah Mohamed Hashim held that the family had no locus standi in the absence of letters of administration. She also held that the particulars of conspiracy pleaded were insufficient to give rise to a reasonable cause of action.

The family’s appeal is presently before the Court of Appeal.

The other defendants named in the suit were Najib’s brothers Ahmad Johari Abdul Razak and Mohd Nazim Abdul Razak, three lawyers – Cecil Abraham, Sunil Abraham and M Arunapalam, as well as Zainal Abidin Muhayat, a commissioner for oaths.

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