Following the unanimous Federal Court ruling today, Rosmah’s appeal against her conviction, 10-year prison sentence, and RM970 million fine will proceed before the Court of Appeal later this year.
Justice Nordin Hassan, who led a three-member bench, said the allegations against trial judge Justice Zaini Mazlan lacked merit.
“The appellant (Rosmah) failed to show that the trial judge was biased. There was also no miscarriage of justice,” said Nordin, who sat with Justices Che Ruzima Ghazali and Azimah Omar.
Nordin said the main basis of the recusal application was that Zaini had purportedly relied on “opinion drafts” prepared by the Kuala Lumpur High Court’s research unit when pronouncing his judgment on Sept 1, 2022.
Nordin said the existence of the drafts was undisputed, and that the only issue was whether there was a real danger of bias as alleged by Rosmah.
He said the trial judge, in his grounds of judgment on the recusal application, had said that he did not rely on the documents prepared by the research unit.
Instead, Nordin said, Zaini prepared his grounds of judgment based on his own research and submissions by parties in the corruption trial.
Nordin said the Court of Appeal had, after perusal, found stark differences between the research unit’s 71-page opinion and Zaini’s 116-page grounds of judgment.
“The Court of Appeal concluded that the trial judge prepared the grounds of judgment himself without relying on the opinions prepared by a third party, to which we agree,” he added.
The judge noted that Zaini gave Rosmah the right to be heard on the last-minute recusal application, and that his decision not to allow any postponement of the hearing did not breach natural justice or Rosmah’s constitutional rights.
He said there was also no procedural impropriety in the present case.
“We further found that Zaini did not violate the Judge’s Code of Ethics 2009,” he said, adding that the impartiality and integrity of judges are presumed the moment they take their oath of office.
“We find no appealable error in the present case warranting this court’s intervention. The appeal is dismissed,” he said.
Lawyers Jagjit Singh, Akberdin Abdul Kader, Firuz Hussein Ahmad Jamaluddin and Amer Hamzah Arshad appeared for Rosmah, the wife of former prime minister Najib Razak.
Deputy public prosecutors Asnawi Abu Hanipah, Ng Siew Wee and P Sarulatha appeared for the prosecution.
On Sept 1, 2022, Zaini, now a Court of Appeal judge, dismissed a last-minute application by Rosmah to stop him from presiding over her case.
Rosmah claimed to have lost confidence in Zaini after a purported draft of his judgment was published by the late blogger, Raja Petra Kamarudin, prior to the decision date.
Zaini convicted Rosmah of soliciting RM187.5 million from former Jepak Holdings Sdn Bhd managing director Saidi Abang Samsudin through her former aide, Rizal Mansor, as an inducement to help the company secure the solar project.
She was also convicted of receiving bribes amounting to RM5 million from Saidi, through Rizal, at Seri Perdana in Putrajaya on Dec 20, 2016, and another charge of receiving RM1.5 million from Saidi at Jalan Langgak Duta on Sept 7, 2017.