KOTA KINABALU: The High Court here has allowed the use of land titles in lieu of cash for former Sabah Water Department director Awang Mohd Tahir Awang Talib’s family to post bail.
Judge Datuk Nurcahaya Arshad allowed the application for variation of bail, stressing it will not affect the RM2 million bail.
In January this year, Judge Ravinthran Paramaguru had reduced Awang’s RM10 million bail to RM5 million bail with RM2 million to be deposited.
Awang’s family today appealed the use of land titles worth about RM2 million as substitute for cash to pay the remaining bail balance as they had only managed to raise RM500,000 in cash.
“Today’s application is to vary or alter as whereby instead of RM2 million sum to be deposited, only a sum of RM500,000 shall be deposited.
“The required deposited balance of sum RM1.5 million will be secured by way of depositing the original copy of title deed to a landed property together with a valuation report from qualified valuers with a value not less than RM2 million.
“This is an application of variation on the method of payment and not application of bail. It is allowed,” said Nurcahaya.
Earlier, Awang’s counsel Mohd Nor Yusof told the court cases of land titles used in lieu of cash were rare but not unheard of.
“There have been four such cases in the country, but none in Sabah so far.
“We are not asking for a reduction in bail amount, just a variation in terms of mode of payment,” he said.
Awang was charged with money laundering early this year. He was among 28 people arrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) in October last year on suspicion of siphoning money from a billion ringgit worth of Federal-funded projects to boost clean water supply in Sabah.