PUTRAJAYA: The Court of Appeal has finally fixed Dec 8 to announce its decision on former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's appeal against his 12-year jail term and RM210 million fine imposed by the High Court in July last year.
Najib was convicted over corruption-related charges involving RM42 million of SRC International Sdn Bhd funds.
The date of the decision was announced in a statement issued by the Office of the Chief Registrar of the Federal Court, today.
According to the statement, a three-man Court of Appeal bench is scheduled to deliver the decision at 9am.
Najib is appealing against his sentence and conviction of seven charges of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering in relation to RM42 million belonging to SRC International Sdn Bhd.
High Court judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali had on July 28, last year, sentenced Najib to 12 years' jail and ordered him to pay RM210 million fine after finding him guilty of all seven charges.
A total of 76 prosecution and defence witnesses gave evidence in the trial that lasted 57 days from April 3, 2019.
The Pekan member of parliament had submitted 307 grounds in his petition of appeal on why he should be freed of the charges.
Among the grounds mentioned in the petition is that he failed to get a fair and just trial in the case.
He had said the trial judge had erred in his finding when deciding to call him to enter his defence and in finding him guilty of the charges.
Najib had said the mistakes made by Mohd Nazlan and the actions of the prosecution in denying him his rights under the Federal Constitution had caused a serious injustice towards him when he failed to get a fair and just trial.
He had said the judge was also wrong in rejecting his defence that fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, had a motive to ensure that there were sufficient funds in his (Najib's) bank account.
Najib had further claimed that the judge had erred in rejecting his defence that Low had deceived him.
However, the prosecution had countered by explaining how the High Court judge had weighed all the evidence and wrote a phenomenal judgement on Najib's guilt.
The prosecution said the court should not interfere with the findings of fact made by Mohd Nazlan.
Lead prosecutor Datuk V Sithambaram had in the hearing told how all the evidence pointed to Najib using SRC International as his personal piggy bank or automated teller machine (ATM) by dictating everything.
This, Sithambaram said, was done through blatant abuse of his position as Prime Minister, Finance Minister and also by positioning himself as the shadow director of SRC.