KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 28 — The wife of Pastor Raymond Koh, who has been missing for eight years, today criticised a High Court decision granting a stay of orders that she said deprived her family of lawfully awarded damages and halted court‑mandated investigations into his disappearance.
Susanna Liew Sow Yoke said the court erred in concluding that her husband had not been deprived of the fruits of litigation merely because his whereabouts remained unknown, despite an earlier judgment awarding more than RM37 million in damages to him and his family.
“With respect, this reasoning is profoundly troubling,” she said in a statement, referring to the finding that her husband was not entitled to receive the monies awarded. “There was no affidavit evidence whatsoever from the Defendants / Applicants alleging that my husband or I am insolvent. None.”
Liew said the defendants had previously proposed that the RM33 million awarded for the wrongful acts against Koh be placed with Amanah Raya Berhad as public trustee pending confirmation of his whereabouts — an arrangement formalised by consent before another High Court judge.
She questioned why the defendants later opposed payment altogether, calling the shift “irreconcilable” with their earlier position and the guarantee of repayment should an appeal succeed.
Last week, Justice Mahazan Mat Taib granted a stay of enforcement on the more than RM37 million in damages awarded to Koh’s family, ruling that “special circumstances” existed to justify the stay pending the government’s appeal.
The judge held that allowing payment now would expose the government to “significant financial risk”, given the size of the award and the difficulty of recovering public funds if the appeal succeeded.
The government had argued that the damages — comprising RM33 million for wrongful acts committed against Koh, RM4 million in general and aggravated damages to Liew, and RM250,000 in costs — should not be paid out until the appeal is resolved.
The High Court had previously found that police officers were involved in Koh’s 2017 abduction.
Liew said the stay order compounded the injustice she had endured, noting that she had lived for eight years without her husband — her sole breadwinner — and without meaningful financial support.
She also expressed alarm that the stay made no exception for the order requiring investigations to recommence and for progress reports to be submitted to the Attorney General’s Chambers every two months.
She said the stay had effectively halted investigations ordered by the trial judge, despite the urgency in disappearance cases where memories fade and witnesses may no longer be available.
Liew confirmed that she had instructed her lawyers to appeal the stay and hoped the Court of Appeal would grant an early hearing date.
She also noted that the defendants only sought the stay after the trial judge’s retirement, despite having filed an appeal earlier and not raising the issue immediately after judgment.
She urged the appellate court to restore the orders allowing investigations to continue so that the truth about her husband’s disappearance would not be further delayed.
