The investigative journalist said she and two other defendants, publisher Gerakbudaya Enterprise and printer Vinlin Press, were embarrassed to respond to the Sultanah’s defamation suit without being provided a clear and definitive identification of parts of the statement that the plaintiff found offensive.
The defendants, in their defence made available to FMT, said the statement complained of was not libellous of the Sultanah and incapable of carrying the negative connotation stated in the plaintiff’s statement of claim.
They said a reasonable and objective view of the statement, in its ordinary and natural meaning, would make one conclude that Jho Low was friendly with the Sultanah sometime in 2009. This was an innocuous statement as the businessman was not known to be notorious then.
“Therefore, any alleged relationship between Jho Low and the Sultanah during that period cannot possibly cast a negative imputation on the plaintiff’s character,” they added.
The defendants said they did not impute the plaintiff was involved in corrupt practices or that the Sultanah had the ability to influence the Terengganu state authorities.
“The only imputation capable of being derived is that Jho Low had used his ties with the Terengganu royal family to obtain an advisory role in setting up the Terengganu Investment Authority (TIA),” they said.
The defendants said the plaintiff had only chosen to rely on that piece of the alleged defamatory statement for her claim without taking into consideration other parts of the book.
They said having read the entire book, one could draw the inference that the royal family was concerned for the welfare of the people by abandoning the TIA and 1MDB.
The defendants said in the event the court found that the statement was defamatory, they would rely on the defence justification, Lucas-box defence, fair comment on a public interest issue, qualified privilege and Reynolds defence.
Last month, Sultanah Nur Zahirah filed a RM300 million defamation lawsuit against the defendants over claims made by the investigative journalist in her book, “The Sarawak Report – The Inside Story of 1MDB Expose”.
In the first edition of the book, Rewcastle-Brown had said that Jho Low was friendly with a key player in Terengganu, the wife of the Sultan, whose acquiescence was needed to set up the fund and he later cited her support as having been crucial to his obtaining the advisory level.
Rewcastle-Brown was reported as saying that the Sultanah had “misunderstood” the contents of her book.
The Sultanah’s lawyer, Haaziq Pillay Abdullah, claimed the contents of Rewcastle Brown’s book were amended by replacing the reference to the Sultanah to the Sultan’s sister in a later edition.