PUTRAJAYA: Lim Guan Eng has been ordered to pay RM250,000 in general damages to former Baling MP Datuk Seri Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim for defamation by the Court of Appeal.
A three-member panel comprising Justices Datuk Azizah Nawawi, Datuk Seri Mariana Yahya and Datuk Azimah Omar also ordered the former Penang chief minister, as the respondent, to pay RM70,000 in costs to Abdul Azeez.
Justice Azimah, when reading out the decision, said the lower court had erred in dismissing Abdul Azeez’s suit against Lim and allowing Lim’s defence of justification, fair comment and qualified privilege over his statement relating to Abdul Azeez.
Abdul Azeez was appealing against the Penang High Court’s decision on Dec 11, 2020, dismissing his defamation suit against Lim, Bernama reported.
In March 2018, Abdul Azeez sued Lim, claiming that the latter had issued defamatory statements during a press conference at the Penang Chief Minister’s Office on Feb 28, 2018, and during a Chinese New Year open house hosted by Penang Development Corporation on the same day, linking Abdul Azeez to a payment of RM3mil as consultation fees from the developer of the Penang undersea tunnel project.
Justice Azimah said the respondent did not take any steps of his own to verify the information, and he never sought any comment or response from the appellant for verification.
She further said the timing of Lim’s issuance of the defamatory statement was too conveniently close to the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2018.
“The respondent has acted for the benefit of his own political and personal agenda and interests,” she added.
Justice Azimah also said that the respondent’s statement went beyond seeking for the authorities to investigate the issue of alleged wrongdoing over the undersea tunnel project and imputed that the appellant was involved in the matter.
“There is no evidence of the respondent reaching out to the appellant; there was no verification exercise.
“There was hastiness in the respondent’s publishing the defamatory statement,” she said, adding that Lim did not issue the statement in good faith but made it to serve political interests.
According to the judge, the developer Consortium Zenith Construction had sent a notice of demand (NOD) to Abdul Azeez in February 2018 to recover the monies but retracted its NOD within a week following Abdul Azeez’s response to the company.
Justice Azimah said the respondent was not a “common layperson” but a “renowned and seasoned veteran” politician who was not a stranger to the litigation process.
“Thus, it should have been clear to him that a mere NOD is not evidence of guilt,” she said, adding that there were no attempts by the respondent to verify the contents of the notice.
Justice Azimah also said the court found that the respondent was not entitled to rely on the defence of justification and was not entitled to rely on fair comment or qualified privilege.
During today’s proceedings conducted via Zoom, Abdul Azeez was represented by lawyers Porres Royan and Craign Ho, while Lim was represented by counsel Datuk N. Mureli and Felix Lim.
