KUALA LUMPUR, July 8 — The Sessions Court was today told that a complaint was sent to Petronas in December 2024 alleging that its former manager, Mohd Khairul Akmal Mohd Jasni, had attempted to send confidential information on the national oil company’s business and financial performance to Petroleum Sarawak Berhad (Petros).
Petronas Senior Manager for Complaint Management, Laila Badriah Razali, 45, testified that she received the complaint via the Petronas Whistleblowing (WB) email channel from the complainant’s personal email address at 10 am on Dec 6, 2024.
“According to the complaint, Mohd Khairul Akmal had sent confidential information relating to Petronas’ Upstream Business performance for the first quarter of 2024 from his personal email account to Petros.
“The information was allegedly sent to two email addresses on June 8, 2024. However, we only received the complaint on Dec 6, 2024. Prior to that, we had not received any similar complaints, including during June 2024,” she said when reading out her witness statement.
Laila Badriah, the fourth prosecution witness, was testifying in the trial of Mohd Khairul Akmal, who is charged with attempting to disclose the confidential report to Petros in June 2024.
She said that upon receiving the complaint, she immediately referred the matter to Petronas Chief Integrity Officer Mohamad Zakkuan Talib, who chaired the company’s Whistleblowing Committee.
“After reviewing the complaint, Mohamad Zakkuan decided that the matter should be referred to the Human Resource-Industrial Relations (HR-IR) Department for further investigation.
“Following his instruction, I sent an email to Wardati and Jumsuri Basri (former Petronas Senior Manager of Industrial Relations and the first prosecution witness) on Dec 6, 2024, at 12.36 pm,” she said during examination-in-chief by Deputy Public Prosecutor Noor Syafina Mohd Radzuan.
During the proceedings, Noor Syafina referred to an email sent by Laila Badriah to Wardati and Jumsuri, which stated that “based on the WB Secretariat’s assessment, the complainant had initially submitted the same complaint on June 8, 2024, but recalled the email before the case registration by the secretariat”.
Explaining the statement, Laila Badriah said the metadata of the email showed it had originally been sent on June 8, but the company only received it on Dec 6 because the sender had recalled the earlier email before it reached the whistleblowing secretariat.
“Although the original email showed it was sent on June 8, we only received it on Dec 6 because the records indicated that the sender had recalled it,” she said.
Under cross-examination by defence counsel Louis Liaw Vern Xien, representing Mohd Khairul Akmal, Laila Badriah acknowledged that she did not ask the complainant why the original complaint submitted on June 8 had been withdrawn.
She also agreed with the lawyer’s suggestion that the complaint would have been more appropriate if it had remained lodged in June 2024 rather than being resubmitted several months later.
Mohd Khairul Akmal, 41, is charged with attempting to disclose a confidential document titled “Q1 2024 Upstream Business Performance Operational & Financial” to Petros after obtaining it in the course of his duties as a Business Unit Performance Manager at Petronas.
The alleged offence was committed at a condominium unit on Jalan Pinang here between 3.19 pm and 3.21 pm on June 8, 2024.
He is charged under Section 203A(1) of the Penal Code, read together with Section 511 of the same law.
Section 203A(1) carries a maximum penalty of a RM1 million fine or one year’s imprisonment upon conviction, while Section 511 provides for a sentence of up to half the maximum term prescribed for the substantive offence upon conviction.
The trial before Judge Mazuliana Abdul Rashid continues on September 22. — Bernama
