KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30 — Former Immigration director-general Datuk Wahid Md Don was today sentenced to six years in prison and fined RM300,000 for a corruption charge he had been acquitted of three years earlier.
Sessions Court judge Rosbiahanin Arifin ruled that the defence had failed to raise reasonable doubt in the prosecution’s case and ordered Wahid’s jail term to run from today, a reversal of her initial decision to acquit the ex-civil servant in 2010.
She also said Wahid should spend another 12 months in jail if he fails to pay the fine, the New Straits Times reported in its website.
Wahid, 59, was charged in the Sessions Court on August 19, 2008 with accepting RM60,000 from businessman Datuk Low Chang Hian as partial payment for speeding up the visa approvals for 4,337 Bangladeshis into the country, about a month after he was accused of committing the offence at Jalan Lembah Ledang, off Jalan Duta here on July 10, 2008.
According to The Malaysian Insider news portal, Justice Rosbiahanin was the same judge who had acquitted Wahid of the corruption charge the first time around.
She had ruled to free Wahid on October 15, 2010 without calling for his defence, reportedly on grounds that the prosecution had failed to prove a prima facie case.
But the prosecution later took up the case at Court of Appeal and was in April this year granted its appeal, both news sites reported.
