Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar said the decision was made following a case management hearing on Aug 2 attended by the lawyers from the legal firm of Carter-Ruck and barrister Jacob Dean, who are representing Hadi.
He said the hearing was held to determine an attempt by Rewcastle Brown to force Hadi to deposit money with the court in the event he loses and has to pay her legal costs. He said she estimated these to be around £800,000 (RM4.47 million) for the whole hearing till completion.
He said the court accepted Hadi’s offer to pay RM80,000.
“Carter-Ruck successfully argued, assisted by a legal opinion from a law expert in Malaysia, that there exists well-established laws between the UK and Malaysia that allows for CRB (Rewcastle Brown) to claim the costs through the law courts in Malaysia, incurring a cost of not more than RM80,000,” Ahmad said in a statement.
“CRB’s arguments that she cannot successfully bring a legal suit against TGHA (Hadi) in Malaysia as the judiciary, government and the prime minister are corrupted and are complicit with him was rejected by the court,” he added.
“As the court observed, these serious allegations were not supported by any evidence from CRB whatsoever, despite having months to provide some.”
Ahmad also said Rewcastle Brown was ordered to pay Hadi two-thirds of his costs for the exercise.
She has to pay £15,000 (RM83,700) to Hadi now, with the quantum of the balance to be assessed by the court in due course, he said.
“This is a very positive development for TGHA in his bid to clear his name of the allegations by CRB and Sarawak Report in their article,” Ahmad said.
He said the court also ordered Rewcastle Brown to submit her defence within 21 days.
A request to appeal the judgment by her lawyers was disallowed by the court, he added.
Ahmad said Hadi was also informed by Carter-Ruck that the Malaysian high commission in London had sent representatives to the hearing.
He said they informed Carter-Ruck that they were there to observe the proceedings as many political allegations were made against prime minister Najib Razak, the Malaysian government and the Malaysian judiciary by Rewcastle Brown in documents that she was filing in the court.
Ahmad said the suit, filed on April 21 at the London High Court, was in relation to an article Rewcastle Brown wrote in August 2016.
It has been reported that Sarawak Report ran an article in which it claimed RM90 million was “reckoned” to have entered the accounts of top PAS leaders to woo them into supporting Umno and Barisan Nasional.