KUALA LUMPUR – Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle Brown, Gerakbudaya Enterprise and Vinlin Press have been ordered to pay RM300,000 in damages to Terengganu Sultanah Nur Zahirah.
The Court of Appeal also ordered the trio to pay RM120,000 in legal costs to the Terengganu royal.
This comes after the three-person bench found that Rewcastle-Brown had defamed Sultanah Nur Zahirah in a book titled “The Sarawak Report-The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose”.
Previously, a three-member bench comprising judges Datuk Hadhariah Syed Ismail, Mohamed Zaini Mazlan and Datuk Azhahari Kamal Ramli heard submissions from the plaintiff and three respondents in an online proceeding on September 22.
Sultanah Nur Zahirah is appealing against the high court decision on October 31 last year, which dismissed her suit against Rewcastle-Brown, Gerakbudaya Enterprise publisher Chong Ton Sin and printer Vinlin Press.
Sultanah Nur Zahirah filed the suit on November 21, 2018, claiming that the said statement, among others, meant that she was involved in corruption and interfering in the administration of the Terengganu government, besides using her status to influence the establishment of the Terengganu Investment Authority (TIA), which was later known as 1Malaysia Development Bhd.
She claimed that the statement meant that she had helped fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho to become a TIA adviser.
In her statement of claim, the sultanah sought general damages of RM100 million from each respondent and an order for the publisher to withdraw the book containing the alleged defamatory statement and for the printer to stop printing the book. – December 12, 2023