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 convic