KUALA LUMPUR: Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah took the ‘work from home’ concept to another level as he attended his Court of Appeal proceedings today from New York.
The senior lawyer is there to help his son settle into school.
Clad in his full legal black and white suit, Shafee changed his Zoom’s background to the iconic Statue of Liberty landmark while waiting for the proceedings to start.
His action drew laughter from the participants, where some of them asked whether Shafee would become a newsreader.
In today’s proceedings, the Court of Appeal is expected to decide on a legal bid by Najib and his lawyer Shafee to recuse Datuk Seri Gopal Sri Ram as the lead prosecutor in their respective court cases.
The former prime minister and his lawyer are appealing against a civil High Court’s decision which dismissed their judicial review application to challenge the legality of Sri Ram’s appointment as head of the prosecution team in their cases.
On Oct 25, High Court Judge Datuk Muhammad Jamil Hussin allowed the senior lawyer to temporarily hold on to his passport until Dec 3.
Shafee’s counsel Wee Yeong Kang submitted that his client was seeking for the temporary release of his passport to see his son who is settling in at the New School Parson in New York for higher studies, from Oct 27 to Nov 30.
Shafee, 69, is facing two counts of money-laundering relating to a RM9.5 million payment he received from former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
He was also charged under the Income Tax Act with two counts of making false declarations to the Inland Revenue Board for not including the RM9.5 million in his tax filing, for the years 2013 and 2014.
He was released on a RM1 million bail.-NST