The Kuala Lumpur High Court has given Abdul Taib Mahmud and Malaysiakini until Sept 9 to work on a settlement following the defamation suit filed by the long-time Sarawak chief minister against the online news portal.

Lawyer Fahri Azzat represented Malaysiakini in today's proceedings.

The matter came up for case management today before judicial commissioner Rosilah Yop.

Rosilah has fixed Nov 14, 2011 to give further directions on the case should no settlement is reached between the two parties in two months’ time.

She has also fixed Jan 3 next year for the exchange of witness statements and for the hearing of the case to be held between Jan 9 and 13 if the trial is to proceed.

The suit, filed in 2007, is over a series of articles highlighting reports about Japanese authorities arresting members of a shipping cartel transporting logs from Sarawak.

The cartel members had allegedly paid Regent Star, a Hong Kong-based paper manufacturing company reportedly linked to Taib and his family, RM32 million in kickbacks.

The issue had also been reported by numerous news organisations in Japan and elsewhere. Malaysiakini followed up with its own special report on the matter, 'RM32 mil kickbacks - tip of the iceberg' .

Case delayed by Taib's appeal

The hearing of the four-year-old case has been put on hold as Taib Mahmud had sought unsuccessfully to remove parts of Malaysiakini's defence in the trial.

Taib Mahmad's appeal went all the way up to the Federal Court where a three-member panel rejected his application for leave to appeal a Court of Appeal decision not to remove three out of four paragraphs he wanted struck off from the defence.

In their unanimous decision on May 9, the bench comprising judges Alauddin Mohd Sheriff, Zulkifli Ahmad Makimuddin and Mohd Ghazali Mohd Yusoff also awarded costs of RM10,000 to the news portal and the co-defendant, editor-in-chief Steven Gan.