Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi arrived at the Kuala Lumpur High Court May 24, 2022. — Picture by Hari Anggara

By Ida Lim

Tuesday, 24 May 2022 2:04 PM MYT

KUALA LUMPUR, May 24 — Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi today continued in court to put the blame on his former executive secretary, insisting that he did not know and had never ordered her to use Yayasan Akalbudi’s cheques bearing his signature to pay for his personal vehicle insurance policies and road tax.

Ahmad Zahid, who is a former deputy prime minister, is also a trustee of the charitable organisation Yayasan Akalbudi which he had founded and which he later became the sole signatory of.

Testifying in his own defence in the trial for alleged criminal breach of trust involving more than RM31 million of Yayasan Akalbudi’s funds, Ahmad Zahid had since yesterday blamed his former executive secretary Major Mazlina Mazlan @ Ramly for having used the charity’s cheques for his personal spending such as to pay his and his wife’s credit card bills and for the vehicle insurance policies.

At one point today, Ahmad Zahid disputed Mazlina’s previous testimony — as the trial’s 90th prosecution witness — that he had allegedly never questioned the secretary why she did not use his personal cheques and that he never questioned why she presented Yayasan Akalbudi cheques for him to sign for the credit card bills.

In rejecting such testimony as allegedly being false, Ahmad Zahid claimed today in court: “I have never and will never give permission to Mazlina to use Yayasan Akalbudi’s cheques for my personal use.”

Ahmad Zahid also claimed that he had never allowed Mazlina to use a stamp of his signature — which he previously claimed to be for Hari Raya cards — or Yayasan Akalbudi cheques which he had pre-signed allegedly for urgent payments to be made for the foundation’s construction projects when he is overseas, for his own personal use.

In this trial, Ahmad Zahid is facing 12 criminal breach of trust charges involving over RM31 million of Yayasan Akalbudi’s funds, namely the alleged misappropriation of funds he was entrusted with — RM1.3 million via 43 cheques for his and his wife’s credit card bills, RM107,509.55 via three cheques for vehicle insurance and road tax for 20 privately-owned vehicles, a RM1.3 million cheque to the police’s football association, a RM10 million cheque for a loan to Armada Holdings Sdn Bhd, RM360,000 via two cheques to political consultancy firm TS Consultancy & Resources, and over RM17.9 million of funds transferred from Yayasan Akalbudi to law firm Lewis & Co.

Zooming in on the RM107,509.55 which he is accused of having misappropriated to pay for road tax and insurance policies for his personal vehicles, Ahmad Zahid claimed that this accusation was untrue as he insisted that it was his secretary who was at fault.

“I state that these cheques are Yayasan Akalbudi cheques which I had pre-signed for Yayasan Akalbudi’s use. But Mazlina had misused those cheques to make payments for vehicle insurance policies and motor vehicle licences,” Ahmad Zahid said.

Ahmad Zahid insisted that it was impossible for him to have issued these Yayasan Akalbudi cheques for his personal vehicles’ insurance policies and road tax, claiming that this was because his signature on the three cheques totalling RM107,509.55 and the handwriting for the name of recipient and the amount were written down using two different inks.

“Here is my signature, here is the recipient and amount, the ink that I signed is different from the ink of the other writings, so it is impossible for me to write using a different ink,” he said of one of these cheques, adding that the recipient’s name and cheque amount were not written by him or his handwriting.

He also repeated similar answers for the two other cheques for the road tax and motor insurance policies.

Ahmad Zahid disputed Mazlina’s previous testimony of him having personally signed these three cheques totalling RM107,509.55 in her presence without questioning why she had given him Yayasan Akalbudi cheques to sign, and her testimony previously that Ahmad Zahid would as usual check the cheque details before signing the cheques.

Disagreeing with Mazlina’s testimony, Ahmad Zahid claimed that he had never allowed Mazlina to use Yayasan Akalbudi cheques — which he claimed to have pre-signed — to pay for road tax and insurance policies for his personal vehicles.

Ahmad Zahid claimed to not have personal knowledge of and insisted he had never ordered Mazlina to use the Yayasan Akalbudi cheques which he allegedly pre-signed for the road tax and insurance policies, also saying he did not know Mazlina would use the cheques for such purposes and that he would have “immediately stopped her actions” if he had known she would do so.

In this trial, Ahmad Zahid ― who is a former home minister and currently the Umno president ― faces 47 charges, namely 12 counts of criminal breach of trust in relation to charitable foundation Yayasan Akalbudi’s funds, 27 counts of money laundering, and eight counts of bribery charges.

Ahmad Zahid’s trial before High Court judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah resumes this afternoon.