KOTA KINABALU: Former Sabah Water Department director Ag Mohd Tahir Mohd Talib and two others were today ordered to enter their defence on multiple charges of money laundering.
Sessions Court judge Abu Bakar Manat made the order on Ag Tahir, 62, his wife Fauziah Piut, 60, and former deputy director Lim Lam Beng, 70, after ruling that the prosecution had established a prima facie case against them.
The court set Feb 26 to 28 and April 28 to 30 next year for the defence case.
Ag Tahir and Lim opted to give evidence under oath from the witness stand while Fauziah opted to give an unsworn statement from the dock.
The prosecution has offered 38 witnesses.
According to lawyer Datuk Ansari Abdullah, who represented the first accused Ag Tahir and the second accused Fauziah, they may call or interview six individuals, namely Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan and Datuk Raymond Tan, both former infrastructure development minister; Datuk Felix Madan and Datuk Michael Emban, both former permanent secretaries of the Infrastructure Development Ministry; former deputy permanent secretary (development) of the state Finance Ministry Datuk Peter Thien; and Teo Chit Ming.
Chit Ming is the brother of this case's star witness Teo Chee Kong.
Ansari added that, since the fourth accused, namely Chee Kong, has been compounded for 146 charges, he has also received instructions from both the first and second accused to submit a new representation to the prosecution.
The trio were jointly tried with 37 counts of money laundering involving cash and bank savings amounting to RM61.57 million, as well as unlawful possession of luxury goods between October and November 2016.
Earlier, the judge in his ruling had said, based on the testimony of prosecution witnesses and the discovery of large amounts of cash in several locations, the court was satisfied that the prosecution had successfully proven that Ag Tahir had used his position as director of the Sabah Water Department and had been involved in illegal activities, namely corruption activities through the "centralised collection" scheme from 2005 to 2016.
Furthermore, based on the testimony of the witnesses, it was clear that the scheme could not have been carried out without the knowledge, instructions, approval and involvement of Ag Tahir himself.
For the second accused, the court found that she did not explain how she could own assets that were more than RM6 million.
Based on the statements of witnesses and documents and circumstantial evidence, the court was satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the second accused through her husband Ag Tahir was involved in possessing the proceeds of illegal activities.