PUTRAJAYA – A former senior administrative assistant at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang started his 12-month jail sentence today after the Court of Appeal denied his last appeal. He was found guilty of four counts of corruption involving about RM8,000.

But Abdul Kahar Kalid, who is 57 years old, was given an 18-month jail sentence by the High Court. He was able to get that sentence reduced.

Justice Mariana Yahya, who gave the oral verdict, said that the sessions court judge who ran the trial did not make a mistake when he told Kahar to start defending himself.

She said, “The trial judge did the right thing when he used Section 23 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act to use a presumption to order the appellant to answer the charges.”

Mariana said that Kahar’s claim that several prosecution witnesses were not credible was not true because of what the trial judge had said about the facts.

“We think the conviction is safe, and the High Court agreed with us,” she said.

But the bench, which also included justices Kamaludin Said and Hadhariah Syed Ismail, let Kahar’s appeal to bring back the 12-month jail terms given by the sessions court on January 6, 2020, and ordered to run at the same time, go through.

After an appeal from the prosecution last year, the High Court made the sentence 18 months long.

“The sessions court judge did the right thing by following the principles of sentencing,” she said.

The sessions court also gave Kahar a fine of RM56,544, which he has already paid.

On the first charge, Kahar was found to have abused his position as a public officer by giving his wife’s business, Neo Global Enterprise, an RM3,508.80 contract to buy printer toners, USB disc drives, and office supplies.

On July 1, 2011, he did the wrong thing at the USM School of Housing, Building, and Planning.

On the second charge, he was found to have given Neo Global Enterprise a contract on the same day to sell one HP colour laser printer worth RM969. This contract was made at the same place of business.

On August 10, 2011, Kahar also gave Neo Global Enterprise a contract to sell them an Epson scanner worth RM568.

On the fourth charge, he was found to have given Neo Global Enterprise a contract to sell an RM3,800 Dell Optiplex desktop-790MT at the same place between July 11 and July 19, 2011.

Kahar was defended by lawyer Hafiz Jalaludin, and deputy public prosecutor Ng Siew Wee was in charge of the case.

Info source – Free Malaysian Today