AHMAD Zahid Hamidi engaged directly or indirectly in financial transactions that involved unlawful activity, the prosecution in the former deputy prime minister’s corruption trial said today. 

Deputy public prosecutor Harris Ong Mohd Jeffery Ong said Zahid had used his relationship with lawyer Muralidharan Balan Pillai from Messrs. Lewis & Co., and with moneychanger Omar Ali Abdullah to operate a money laundering scheme.

“All of Zahid’s 27 money laundering charges dealt with proceeds of unlawful activity. 

“The accused displayed the power of control over the illegal proceeds by giving instructions to Muralidharan and Omar Ali,” Ong said at the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

Ong said that Zahid had orchestrated for Omar to be his agent by receiving cash from individuals, then banking in the cash and also to convey all cheques to Zahid.

“This honourable court should look at the series of events beginning from instructions given by the accused to Omar Ali, the method and conduct in delivering the cash to Omar Ali, the converting process by Omar Ali, acceptance by the accused for all suspicious cheques from Omar Ali, and finally ending up in Messrs. Lewis & Co.

“It is submitted that this was a premeditated and deliberate scheme by the accused to commit a corrupt act with financial gratification foremost in the accused mind,” Ong said.

The prosecutor also submitted that the various methods used by Omar and his conduct in converting the cash also falls under the definition of unlawful activity. 

The prosecutor said that Zahid’s major and only concern was that all the monies physically “disappear, transform, exchange and convert into cheques” for a simple reason: It was more convenient for Zahid, later on, to hand them over to Muralidharan. 

Between May 2016 and April 2018, for almost two years, Muralidharan was entrusted with 92 cheques amounting to RM76.9 million, added the prosecutor.

“Muralidharan must be someone that the accused could trust so much to manage the enormous sum of money on his behalf,” Ong said.  

Previously, the court had heard that Omar and his wife Kamarunisah Ahmah Shah both knew Zahid, who is the Umno president and Bagan Datuk MP, as they were from the same hometown under his constituency.

Muralidharan told the court that he met Zahid at a mutual acquaintance’s office, and that Lewis & Co. had handled some civil litigation matters for Zahid. 

Muralidharan had been in touch with Zahid since around 2006 or 2007 and described their relationship as one that involves “trust” and “maybe friendship”.

“There will always be another Omar Ali and Muralidharan in any money laundering operating system in the world. 

“Even though they shared different backgrounds, they are in the same team with their unique and special talent that was hooked together by the accused in running the scheme,” Ong said. 

The prosecution is currently making closing arguments in the trial of Zahid, who is facing 47 charges in total – 12 counts of criminal breach of trust, 27 counts of money laundering, and eight counts of bribery – involving tens of millions of ringgit in funds belonging to his charity foundation Yayasan Akalbudi.

There are 25 charges of money laundering that involve Zahid allegedly giving instructions to Muralidharan of Lewis & Co., which was the trustee of Yayasan Akalbudi. These charges relate to funds of over RM53 million allegedly from unlawful activities placed in fixed deposit accounts.

The 26th charge concerns RM7 million placed in fixed deposits and subsequently withdrawn by Lewis & Co., out of which RM5.9 million was eventually used to buy two bungalow lots in Country Heights, Kajang, for Zahid’s brother’s religious foundation Yayasan Al-Falah.

In the 27th charge, Zahid was alleged to have instructed moneychanger Omar to convert RM7.5 million of cash into 35 cheques given to Lewis & Co. to be placed in fixed deposits.

The hearing continues tomorrow before high court judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah. – October 5, 2021.