KUALA LUMPUR – The Federal Court today dismissed former Perak executive councillor Paul Yong’s application for leave to review an earlier decision that upheld his conviction for raping his Indonesian maid.
A three-judge panel led by Chief Judge of Malaya Hashim Hamzah, sitting with Justices Collin Lawrence Sequerah and Nazlan Ghazali, held that Yong had not satisfied the stringent requirements under Rule 137 of the Rules of the Federal Court 1995.
Rule 137 relates to the Federal Court’s inherent power to review its own decisions in order to prevent injustice or an abuse of process.
Delivering the ruling, Hashim said Yong had argued that there was a breach of natural justice because he was allegedly not given the opportunity to make submissions on the court’s intention to depart from established authorities.
“However, we are of the view that the parties were given full opportunity to ventilate the same issues, which were examined, and that ultimately, there was no breach of natural justice,” he was quoted saying by FMT.
Yong is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence and facing two strokes of the cane after the Federal Court, in October last year, dismissed his final appeal against his conviction.
In that decision, the apex court bench led by Chief Justice Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh found that Yong’s conviction was sound and ordered him to begin serving his sentence immediately.
Wan Farid had said the lower courts were correct in treating the victim as a credible witness.
In October 2025, Yong filed an application seeking to have his appeal reheard before a differently constituted Federal Court panel.
Yong was convicted by the High Court on July 22, 2022, of raping the 23-year-old woman at his home in Ipoh between 8.15pm and 9.15pm on July 7, 2019.
The Court of Appeal subsequently upheld the conviction, with Justices Hadhariah Syed Ismail and Azman Abdullah forming the majority, while Justice S Komathy dissented. – February 6, 2026