SEBERANG PERAI, Oct 16 — The Sessions Court has set December 18 for case management of power abuse, money laundering and abetment cases against former finance minister Lim Guan Eng, his wife Betty Chew Gek Cheng and businesswoman Phang Li Koon.
Sessions court judge Ahmad Azhari Abdul Hamid set this date after both the deputy public prosecutor and Lim’s counsel asked the court time for the defence to go through documentations regarding the cases.
Deputy Public Prosecutor S. Selvaranjini told the court that the prosecution had surrendered case documents to the defence team as required under Section 51A of the Criminal Procedure Code.
“There are more documents that we need to hand over to the defence so we would like to request another date for case management to give us time to hand over the rest of the documents,” she told the court.
RSN Rayer, who appeared for both Lim and Chew, told the court that the defence team needed time to go through the case documentations.
Ahmad Azhari then fixed another date to allow both sides time to manage the case documentations.
In August, Lim, 60, was charged with abusing his power to obtain RM372,009 for his wife Betty Chew Gek Cheng sometime between August 19 in 2013 and March 3 in 2016 at the Penang chief minister’s office at Level 28 in Komtar.
He allegedly used his position as the Penang chief minister and Penang Development Corporation (PDC) Tender Board to obtain gratification for his wife Chew through Excel Property Management & Consultancy Sdn Bhd.
He allegedly used his position to ensure Magnificent Emblem Sdn Bhd was offered a request for proposal for a workers’ quarters project in Batu Kawan in South Seberang Perai worth RM11,610,000.
Phang, 48, was charged with abetting Lim in the offence.
Chew was charged with three counts of money laundering in which she allegedly received a total RM372,009 on three different occasions between October 7 in 2013 and March 3 in 2016.
Both Lim and Phang were charged under the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009 while Chew was charged under the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001 (Amla).
