JUDGMENT

Abang Iskandar JC:

[1] The appellant had been charged under s. 11(a) Anti-Corruption Act 1997 ('the ACA 1997') , for accepting for himself, as an agent, a gratification of RM2,000 from the complainant for him to restrain from taking action against the said complainant and at the end of the whole trial, he was convicted on the said charge and was sentenced by the learned Sessions Court Judge ('the SCJ') to five months imprisonment and a fine of RM10,000 in default four months imprisonment. He had since appealed against that decision and sentence and had since the date of sentence been granted a stay of execution of the imprisonment term.

[2] His appeal was largely premised upon the issue whereby the SCJ had failed to treat the complainant (who appeared as SP4 during the trial), as an accomplice and as such, his evidence therefore needed to be independently corroborated in material particulars. It was also argued quite persuasively before me by learned counsel En. Haresh Mahadevan, that as the purported tape-recording (ID19) of the corrupt transaction was not tendered as the prosecution exhibit, there was therefore no corroboration of the evidence of SP4 and as such, the conviction that was had against his client could not stand. It was also noted by learned counsel that the SCJ's judgment did not indicate that she had so convicted this appellant having warned herself of the danger of convicting based on an uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice.

[3] That complaint by this appellant on the status of SP4 as an accomplice and its ensuing ramifications in terms of certain legal obligations in the manner in which his evidence must then be treated would appear in essence, to be the crux of this appeal. If this Court were with the appellant on that issue, then this appeal must be allowed. Much emphasis had been relied on by learned counsel on the case of Dato' Hj Azman Mahalan v. PP, [2007] 4 MLJ 142 a decision by learned Justice Dato' VT Singam J in the Ipoh High Court pertaining to the said issue as to how the evidence of a witness who had participated in a crime of bribery ought to be treated by the Court. In the Dato' Azman Mahalan 's case (supra) , the learned judge had said the following before setting aside the conviction entered against the appellant in that case:

On the other hand and even assuming that PW1 does not fit under the definition of an accomplice which this Court is of the view otherwise, the Learned Sessions Judge ought to have found at least on the totality of the evidence that the conduct and role played by PW1 in the whole episode amounts to dishonesty, trickery and tainted with moral turpitude. Accordingly, the Learned Sessions Court Judge ought to have rejected the evidence of PW1 as against both charges as being unreliable or looked for corroboration as defined in R v. Baskerville ... (emphasis added)

A line of other cases on the need for corroboration of an accomplice's evidence was also cited in support by the learned counsel.

Kesimpulannya, hakim bicara kedua mendapati bahawa SP1 adalah rakan seje