PUTRAJAYA – The mother of Tan Sri Jamaluddin Mohd Jarjis failed in her Court of Appeal application today to adduce further evidence in her appeal relating to a civil suit which seeks to include company shares as part of her late son's estate.
A three-member bench comprising of Justices Datuk Lee Swee Seng, Datuk Hadhariah Syed Ismail and Datuk M. Gunalan dismissed Aminah Abdullah's application with costs of RM5,000.
In the court's unanimous decision, Justice Lee said the court found no merits in Aminah's application to adduce the evidence of Datuk Zakri Afandi Ismail in the appeal.
He said Aminah had every opportunity to call Zakri and had subpoenaed him but chose not to call him for the reasons best known to her.
Justice Lee said the evidence sought by Aminah was only in the form of an assertion in an affidavit filed by Zakri in his lawsuit against her two grandchildren, adding the court had not evaluated the evidence at the trial which has yet to commence.
Earlier, Aminah's lawyer Wan Zafran Pawancheek sought the court to admit Zakri's affidavit which he had filed in separate suits against Jamaluddin's children – Ikhwan Hafiz and Nur Anis – where the former business associate wanted the return of shares in three companies, including Alpine Motion Sdn Bhd and Ivory Insights Sdn Bhd.
He said Zakri's evidence supported Aminah's entire case adding that the trial on Aminah's lawsuit against her grandchildren already ended with the High Court delivering the decision in August last year.
Wan Zafran told the court that they tried to call Zakri, a confidante of the late Jamaluddin, to testify as a witness but decided not to as he demanded exorbitant fees of RM24,800 for him to testify.
He said the suit filed by Zakri showed that Alpine Motion and Ivory Insights shares should have been part of Jamaluddin's estate.
Lawyer Saheran Suhendran representing Ikhwan Hafiz submitted that the Zakri's evidence should not be admitted as the matter had not gone to trial. He said Aminah had the opportunity to call Zakri to testify in the trial but chose not to.
On Aug 13, last year, the High Court in Kuala Lumpur allowed Aminah's application to declare three million shares of Rantai Wawasan Sdn Bhd to be included in the list of Jamaluddin’s estate.
The High Court, however, dismissed her application for a declaration that six million shares in Alpine Motion and two shares in Ivory Insight were part of her son’s estate.
The 87-year-old mother is appealing against the High Court's dismissal of her application for a declaration to include Alpine Motion and Ivory Insight shares as part of the estate while her grandchildren are cross-appealing against the High Court's decision to declare that the Rantai Wawasan shares to be included in the estate.
On Jan 3, 2019, Aminah sued Nur Anis and Ikwan Hafiz, claiming that the duo, as joint administrators of their father's estate, failed to include three company shares as an inheritance in the list of assets in the letter of administration when Jamaluddin died in 2015 and they also failed to enter the shares as a liability since July 6, 2017.
In her statement of claim, Aminah claimed her grandchildren failed to enter the shares of the three companies – Rantai Wawasan, Alpine Motion and Ivory Insight – as part of the deceased’s estate with an intention to deny her rights and interests as a beneficiary.
Jamaluddin, a former Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, was killed in a helicopter crash on April 4, 2015.
Meanwhile, Zakri filed three separate lawsuits against Ikhwan Hafiz and Nur Anis for the return of the shares of three companies which he established together with Jamaluddin when they worked at EPE Power Corporation Bhd. – Bernama, May 17, 2022
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