CHONG Chieng Jen has been found guilty of defaming the Sarawak government and State Financial Authority (SFA) over claims of financial impropriety he made in 2013.

Kuching High Court Judicial Commissioner Alexander Siew, who ordered the Sarawak DAP chairman to pay RM150,000 in damages and RM50,000 in legal costs, said Chong’s impugned words or statement were defamatory.

In a legal precedent, the state government and the SFA took the Padungan assemblyman and Stampin MP – the first such case of a government suing its citizen – to court over a statement he told news media that RM10 billion was unaccounted from the state budget over a period of seven years and that it had disappeared into a “black hole”, which the case is known as in Sarawak.

In answering the question of law if a state government can sue its citizen, the Federal Court had ruled it could.

Siew, in his judgment today, said Chong had failed in the trial that started in January 2021 to prove any justification, fair comment and qualified privileges for making that statement.

He said he had found that the state government and SFA have proven that Chong’s statement was malicious.

The judicial commissioner also placed a restraining order on Chong, “whether by himself, his servants or agents” to publish or cause to publish the statement.

Chong’s counsel, Michael Kong, notified the court that he would be seeking a stay of execution as he would be filing an appeal. – August 30, 2022.