Justo denied bail

Swiss national Xavier Andre Justo who was sentenced to three years imprisonment for blackmailing his former employer, PetroSaudi International, was today denied bail pending the outcome of his appeal against the sentence.

Justo appeared at the Bangkok South Criminal Court for the hearing this morning accompanied by seven correctional officers as well as his Thai lawyer Worasit Piriyawiboon.

He failed to get bail as the court was concerned that he will use the opportunity to escape from Thailand.

Worasit told Bernama that he will submit a fresh bail application again next week.

The bail application offering to post a one million baht bail was submitted on Oct 14 together with an appeal against the three years sentence that was imposed on him on Aug 17.

His case attracted some interest in Malaysia as Justo had stolen 90 gigabytes of data from PetroSaudi International and given copies of them to Sarawak Report editor and founder Claire Rewcastle Brown as well owner of the Edge Media Group Tong Kooi Ong.

The Malaysian police are also interested to interview Justo in connection with his relationship with them as the data include business dealings between PetroSaudi International and 1Malaysia Development Berhad, and there were claims that there have been tampering of the data.

Justo had denied he tampered with the data and stated any tampering was done by others.

1Malaysia Development Berhad has been under the spotlight in Malaysia over its business dealings.