KUALA LUMPUR – Muar MP and Muda president Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman has been found guilty of corruption.
High court judge Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamid, who took his bench at 10.05am, gave his judgement after finding no merit in Syed Saddiq’s defence.
He found the lawmaker guilty after having considered the testimonies of 29 prosecution witnesses and four defence witnesses, including Syed Saddiq himself, throughout the trial.
Azhar then said the prosecution successfully established a case against Syed Saddiq and that the accused failed to raise any reasonable doubt against the prosecution’s case.
Syed Saddiq was hauled to court in 2021 to face four criminal charges involving money laundering, criminal breach of trust, and fund misappropriation.
The trial at the prosecution stage began in June last year, with the prosecutions led by deputy public prosecutor Datuk Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin and Mohd ’Afif Ali taking the lead.
The judge, in October last year, ordered Syed Saddiq to enter his defence against the charges after a prima facie case had been established.
Today, Syed Saddiq was found guilty of one count of criminal breach of trust, where he is guilty of abetting former Armada assistant treasurer Rafiq Hakim Razali, who was entrusted with RM1 million of Armada’s funds, to commit the offence by misappropriating the funds, under Section 406 of the Penal Code, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment, along with possible caning and a fine if found guilty.
He was also found guilty of one count of misappropriating Armada Bumi Bersatu Enterprise funds amounting to RM120,000 by causing Rafiq to dispose of the funds under Section 403 of the same Code, carrying a maximum of five years imprisonment with strokes of rotan and a fine upon conviction.
The high court also found him guilty of two charges of allegedly being engaged in money laundering involving two transactions of RM50,000, each believed to be proceeds from unlawful activities, under Section 4(1) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001, which carries a maximum of 15 years imprisonment with a fine at least five times the sum obtained from money laundering, or RM5 million, whichever is higher upon conviction. – November 9, 2023