Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (July 21): Two MARA senior officers have pleaded not guilty at the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur to five charges each of abusing their power to receive gratification.

The accused — Rizal Abdul Ghani and Nor Irwan Marimin — both appeared before Judge Susana Hussin.

Rizal, who did not have a lawyer to represent him, was group corporate finance director of MARA Corp Sdn Bhd and was charged with using his position to obtain five sets of payments from the company.

The first charge related to an amount of RM30,375 he received on Sept 15, 2021. He was also charged for receiving RM2,625 in four occasions in October, November, December 2021 and January 2022.

As for the second accused, Nor Irwan, who was acting group chief executive officer, was charged with taking bribes amounting to RM33,093 on Sept 15, 2021.

Similar to Rizal, he was also charged with receiving RM3,281 in four occasions in October, November, December 2021 and January 2022.

The charges read out to both men in court stated that they had used their position in the company to claim that the bribes were "acting allowances" by approving an internal memo without prior approval of the board of directors.

Both men were charged under Section 23 (1) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009, which provides a jail term of up to 20 years and a fine of no less than five times the amount of gratification or RM10,000, whichever is higher, upon conviction.

The judge then set Aug 23 for case mention.

It was reported that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) was investigating allegations of abuse of power and mismanagement involving allowances for several executives of MARA's investment arm, MARA Corp in February this year.

MACC also raided several MARA offices to collect documents related to the case.

Last month, MACC Chief Commissioner Tan Sri Azam Baki denied a news report that said the Attorney General's Chambers (AGC) would drop charges against the MARA officials because of insufficient evidence.

He said there was "sufficient evidence" to charge the officials with corruption, adding that MACC had submitted its investigation papers to the AGC and proposed that several parties be charged.

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