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Corruption Caset Gets Reduce Sentence
November 27th, 2016 | 12:07 PM | 3927 views
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
The Court of Appeal recently reduced a corruption offender's sentence from five years to three years' imprisonment.
The court also reduced her default sentence of-nine months to six months. Aidah binti Tengah, 44, a former Brunei Shell Petroleum Company Sendirian Berhad (BSP) employee, accepted bribes from an authorised BSP contractor Musfada Enterprise to expedite the purchase order.
Musfada Enterprise is controlled by one David Chong who was in 2013 sentenced to six years' imprisonment for offering bribes to BSP employees.
In August this year, the High Court sentenced Aidah to five years' imprisonment and ordered her to pay a penalty of $200,200 which amounted to the total she received in bribe.
The High Court also ordered that if she is unable to pay the penalty she will have to serve an additional six months and if she fails to pay the agreed prosecution's cost of $120,000 she will have to serve an additional three months.
In the appeal against the sentence, Aidah, who was represented by Lawyer Haji Rozaiman bin Abdul Rahman of Messrs Rozaiman Abdul Rahman, stated that the sentence was excessive.
The Court of Appeal Judges, John Barry Mortimer, David John Leonard and Michael Peter Burrell agreed this and -reduced the sentence.
In the reduction of sentence, the appellate judges, took into account the fact the corrupt scheme that was set up by Musfada Enterprise, was complex, sophisticated and involved a large number of BSP employees over a long period of time, and that the investigation into Aidah's case was lengthy and Aidah's full criminal involvement was only known until after David Chong was convicted and sentenced.
The Appellate court further stated that there was no fault on the prosecution part in not pursuing the case against Aidah earlier.
However, because the Prosecution of Aidah took six years from the time of investigation, the court took into account the fact that she suffered from anxiety and stress and there was a breakdown in her marriage as a result of this delay, and also took into limited account the fact that she had lost her job and her pension rights and was a single mother of three children.
DPP Aldila Sale appeared as respondent in the appeal.
Source:
@BRUDIRECT.COM
by BruDirect.com
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