KUANTAN: An army officer, who was sentenced to a day’s jail by a Sessions Court here for graft, had his jail sentence increased to a week after the High Court here allowed an appeal by the prosecution against the sentence.
Judge Datuk Zainal Azman Ab Aziz also ordered Shaharil Hisham Abdul Razak, 59, to pay the RM15,000 fine, in default, five months’ jail.
In the judgment, Zainal Azman said he had to intervene in the sentence imposed by the Session Court judge on Oct 11 last year because the one-day jail did not reflect the seriousness of the offence committed by the accused.
“The court has to place public interests above individual interest, what more in a case that involves corruption and civil servants because it involves integrity and the government’s machinery.
“Corruption is not a case that involves force. Instead, it is planned and chosen by am accused of high rank. It is not like a single mother stealing a tin of milo in the supermarket to feed her children,“ he said.
Zainal Azman said although the offence committed by the accused did not incur losses on the government as the project was completed, as submitted by his counsel, but graft had been committed.
He said the guilty plea by the accused after the prosecution received a representation from the accused did not erode the court’s power to impose a sentence that commensurate with the offence.
However, he allowed an application by counsel Ahmad Nizam Hamid for a stay of the jail sentence pending an appeal to the Court of Appeal.
The prosecuted, conducted by deputy public prosecutor from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), Siti Sarah Zainal Abiddin (repeat: Abiddin), had filed the appeal against the one-day sentence on Oct 30 last year.
Shaharil Hisham, then the Staff Officer 1 (Zone Head) with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel at the East Zone maintenance Office (Pahang) of the Facility Maintenance and Management Branch, Defence Engineering Service Division, Batu 3 Camp, Temerloh near here, was charged with accepting gratification of RM5,794 from a contractor, Mohd Rozaini Mohamad Rosli.
The money was deposited into a Malayan Banking Berhad account belonging to his wife at the bank’s branch at Jalan Bukit Ubi here on Nov 18, 2016. — Bernama
