Court orders Farhash to pay costs to after halting gag bid

The Court of Appeal today ordered Farhash Wafa Salvador to pay RM10,000 in costs to MalaysiaNow, after the former PKR leader turned multi-millionaire corporate figure made a last-minute decision not to proceed with an appeal to stop the news portal from further reporting on the Sabah mining licences scandal, which is now the subject of a RM10 million defamation suit.

Farhash, a former political secretary to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, together with his business partner Aminuddin Mustapha, has filed a defamation suit against MalaysiaNow over reports on their company Bumi Suria Sdn Bhd's application for a mining exploration licence covering a massive forest reserve area in Sabah.

Following the suit, the plaintiffs filed an application to restrain MalaysiaNow from publishing articles related to the report, but this was dismissed by the Shah Alam High Courtin September 2025.

The judge had then ruled there was no necessity for an interim injunction as "the defence put forth is not obviously untrue".

The following month, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's decision, with a three-member panel comprising justices Hashim Hamzah, Azizul Azmi Adnan and Ong Chee Kwan, stating the court would not depart from precedent on fair comment and qualified privilege.

Ahead of a third attempt to silence MalaysiaNow, which was set to be heard at the Court of Appeal today, Farhash's lawyers informed the court that they had been instructed to withdraw the appeal as the injunction proceedings had become "redundant".

"It was submitted that the plaintiffs’ conduct in pursuing and subsequently withdrawing the appeal had occasioned substantial and unnecessary expenditure of time and legal costs," said Raj & Sach, the law firm representing MalaysiaNow.

MalaysiaNow was represented by lawyers Rajesh Nagarajan and Amanda Sonia Mathew, while the plaintiffs were represented by Rajan Navaratnam, Sheena Stephanie Sebastian and Ezryl Azlyzan Ahmad Damanhuri.

On July 21 last year, MalaysiaNow revealed documents and audio recordings showing how Sabah Chief Minister Hajiji Noor, during a meeting of the state's mineral agency Sabah Minerals Management (SMM), approved Bumi Suria's application for a mining exploration licence covering 70,000 hectares in the Kalabakan and Gunung Rara forest reserves near the Kalimantan border – an area almost three times the size of Kuala Lumpur.

The report revealed that Bumi Suria's application was confirmed in black and white on May 21, 2024, just two weeks after Farhash and Amin took control of the company.

SMM, which is chaired by Hajiji, has been mired in an explosive corruption scandal involving Sabah's ruling politicians after businessman Albert Tei released a series of video recordings showing state assemblymen discussing bribes ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of ringgit.