Two farmers change plea to guilty over bribery

PETALING JAYA: In a U-turn decision, two farmers on trial for bribing National Security Council (NSC) officers changed their plea to guilty today.
The two from Cameron Highlands were charged by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on four counts of bribing NSC officers in 2015.
The accused, Law Hee Thiam, 38, and Chan Kok Fong, 40, pleaded guilty in front of Judge Habibah Yusof at the Sessions Criminal Court in Kuantan.
They were charged with giving bribes to officers to prevent them from demolishing their farm which was built on illegal land in Cameron highlands.
Law was charged with meting out bribes as much as RM15,000, whereas Chan was charged with three counts of giving bribes amounting to RM20,000 and RM3,000 and also offering bribes of RM1,000 to NSC officers.
Both the men were slapped with jail time and hefty fines.
Law will serve one day in prison and was fined RM75,000 whereas Chan will face the same amount of jail time and a RM125,000 fine.
The pair had offered the bribes to officers during Ops Gading in 2015.
Ops Gading was a massive operation launched after the 2014 mud floods in Cameron Highlands.
Its objective was to clear illegal farms and stop the illegal land clearing blamed for the environmental disasters.