According to the portal, the suit names Malaysiakini, editor-in-chief Steven Gan and a journalist as defendants, and cites 22 articles on the portal, including four Bernama stories, as well as readers’ comments.

Zahid currently faces 12 charges of criminal breach of trust, eight charges of corruption and 27 charges of money laundering.

In the suit, Zahid’s legal team asserts that the articles had either misreported or misrepresented the court proceedings and cast the Umno chief in a negative light.

In addition to damages, Zahid is seeking an injunction to prevent further defamatory articles and comments from being published on the site.

His legal team first issued letters of demand to the portal in August, with its lawyer K Shanmuga seeking further clarification later that month.

“Your notices of demand do not make it clear the particular words and or comments in the appendices which are alleged to be defamatory of your client, but make a general statement that all those news reports bear the same meanings, and are alleged to be defamatory to your client,” he wrote.

While Zahid’s side reportedly did not respond to the lawyer’s request for clarification, they highlighted the portions of articles and readers’ comments they believed to be defamatory in their suit filed on Wednesday.

The lawsuit was filed by Messrs Shahrul Hamidi & Haziq.

Late last month, Malaysiakini was fined RM500,000 by the Federal Court for contempt of court for facilitating the publication of five readers’ comments.

The portal was able to pay the fine ahead of schedule, with donations from readers following an appeal to the public.