The Johor royal family’s former legal counsel, Kamal Hisham Jaafar, was fined RM30,000 by the Sessions Court in Johor Bahru today after he pleaded guilty to one charge under the Companies Act 1965.

Judge Mohd Nasir Nordin sentenced him after hearing the accused’ guilty plea when he was given an offer by the prosecution under Section 171A of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Under that section, Kamal Hisham was given an offer to plead guilty to one charge carrying a minimum punishment of a fine and no criminal record.

The court with the consent of the prosecution and the accused also took into consideration the other 16 charges against Kamal Hisham before passing the sentence.

Kamal Hisham paid the RM30,000 fine and was freed by the court.

Kamal Hisham, 48, was facing two counts of criminal breach of trust amounting to RM533,000; nine counts of money laundering involving almost RM150,000 and six charges under the Companies Act 1965. He, however, pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

On June 13, the Sultan of Johor, Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar pardoned Kamal Hisham and forgave him unconditionally after an apology was received from him.

Earlier in the proceedings this morning the lawyers representing Kamal Hisham expressed disappointment that he was not acquitted and discharged by the court despite being pardoned by Sultan Ibrahim.

This was contrary to what the prosecution and defence had discussed before the proceedings took place, as things did not go as agreed.

This resulted in the court then deciding to continue his defence which was scheduled to take place today and tomorrow, to proceed pending the defence’s effort to settle the issue.

However, when the defence trial proceedings began in the evening session, Kamal Hisham suddenly chose to plead guilty to an alternative charge for the second charge.

Based on the charge sheet, Kamal Hisham was charged with using his position as director of Southern Ads Sdn Bhd company to lease business space at JB Sentral to a company in which he is a director and shareholder and then rents out the business space to another company to directly make a profit.

For acts committed between Aug 7, 2009 and July 31, 2011, he was charged under Section 132 (2) (c) of the Companies Act 1965 and punishable under Section 132 (3) (b) of the same Act which carries a jail term of five years or a fine of RM30,000, upon conviction.

Deputy public prosecutors Ku Hayati Ku Haron, Zhafran Rahim Hamzah, Shukor Abu Bakar and prosecution officer from the Companies Commission of Malaysia, Mohd Afif Abdullah prosecuted.

Kamal Hisham was represented by lawyers Shaharudin Ali, Mohd Khairul Azam Abd Aziz and Hasan Karim.

- Bernama