PUTRAJAYA, April 7 — The livestream media coverage of Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s SRC International Sdn Bhd appeal hearing at the Court of Appeal yesterday was cut-off temporarily due to an internet disruption, the Office of the Chief Registrar Federal Court clarified today.

In a statement, it said the Putrajaya Campus Network (PCN) disruption affected the Palace of Justice where the appeal hearing was being heard and several other government agencies in Putrajaya from 10.30am to noon.

“However, the disruption did not affect the recording of appeal proceedings in open court.

“All lawyers and prosecutors were still supplied with a soft copy of the recording after proceedings ended,” it said.

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PCN is a round-the-clock network infrastructure that provides, operates, manages, implements and monitors the daily operations of the network to government agencies in Putrajaya and Cyberjaya.

As a precautionary measure against Covid-19, reporters assigned for coverage are placed in a separate area at the Palace of Justice’s conference hall to avoid overcrowding at the court where the hearing took place.

The statement follows an article titled “Shafee goes ‘silent’ for over an hour during SRC” published by Free Malaysia Today yesterday.

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Najib’s daugther Nooryana Najwa subsequently picked up the aforementioned article and questioned why the “livefeed blackout” took place when her father’s lawyer, Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, was submitting a “shocking revelation” to the Court of Appeal.

In an Instagram Story posting, she claimed that the “shocking revelation” that the media “failed” to report on concerned submissions on trial judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali erring in his judgment which subsequently found her father guilty.

Nooryana then insisted this was exactly the reason why all 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) court proceedings should be aired ‘live’ to the public.

In the RM42 million SRC International case,  Najib was sentenced to 10 years’ jail on each of the three counts of CBT and each of the three counts of money laundering, and 12 years’ jail and a RM210 million fine, in default five years’ jail, in the case of abuse of position on July 28 last year.

However, Najib will only serve 12 years in jail as the judge ordered all the jail sentences to run concurrently.

The appeal hearing is being heard before Court of Appeal judge Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil who chaired a three-member panel alongside Datuk Has Zanah Mehat and Datuk Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera.