Court staff take hours to register charges in Genneva cases

KUALA LUMPUR: It was a tiring day for court staff at the criminal registry.

They took hours to register 913 money laundering, 10 illegal deposit-taking and three charges for making false statements in the Genneva case.

Four officers from Bank Negara carried documents in suitcases to the registry at about 9am, but the cases began at 3pm due to the sheer volume of documents that had to be sorted out by eight court workers.

One of them, Amin Rafiq Badrul, said five women and men were roped in to register the cases from morning and only finished at about 2.30pm.

“We had to be provided with four sets of papers for each charge to be registered. Just imagine the volume of documents that we had to sort out,” he said with a laugh.

“We had to stamp each set of charges and record them accordingly,” he said.

Reporters waited for hours at the registry at the Jalan Duta court complex after hearing that several Datuks were to be charged for various offences in relation to a scheme involving gold transactions.

In the first Sessions Court, a court interpreter took about 15 minutes to read out the charges involving false statements.

In the second Sessions Court, interpreter Syed Zainal Syed Ibrahim took more than 30 minutes to read out the money-laundering charges and another 15 minutes to read out the illegal deposit-taking charges.

The Genneva office was raided by police, Bank Negara, the Companies Commission of Malaysia and the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry on Oct 1 last year, leading to the charges yesterday.