KUALA LUMPUR – Former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak will return to court tomorrow to face another corruption trial, six years after he was charged.
The 70-year-old former Pekan MP will be tried with former Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah for criminal breach of trust involving RM6.6 billion of government funds used to pay the International Petroleum Investment Company (Ipic) in one of the early scandals involving 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
The trial will be heard before high court judge Datuk Muhammad Jamil Hussin.
Najib and Irwan were charged in October 2018, where they were accused of committing the offences at the Finance Ministry’s complex in Putrajaya between December 21, 2016 and December 18, 2017.
They were charged with six counts under Section 409 of the Penal Code, which carries a maximum of 20 years in jail, whipping and a fine upon conviction.
They had previously submitted a representation letter to the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) in March 2022 to have the charges reviewed. This letter was dismissed, and they subsequently submitted another representation letter.
However, the high court went on to fix 30 days of trial, spanning over June and July this year, despite no response from the AGC on the second representation letter.
The court has also struck out the pair’s application for a discharge not amounting to an acquittal for all charges.
The accusations against them involve payments to a subsidiary of Ipic, Aabar Investments PJS, that were negotiated while Najib was the prime minister and finance minister who oversaw 1MDB.
However, Aabar Investments PJS never received the funds from 1MDB, and it emerged later that the money had been siphoned off to a company with a similar name, Aabar Investments PJS Ltd, that was started by fugitive businessman and scandal mastermind Low Taek Jho.
Ipic pursued arbitration at the London Court of International Arbitration in 2017 seeking payment of US$5.78 billion (RM27.2 billion) from Malaysia. Malaysia in 2018 filed a challenge against this move on grounds that Ipic’s claim was the result of fraud.
In November 2022, the London court ruled that Malaysia can pursue its case against Ipic and Aabar Investments PJS.
In February last year, Ipic and its subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS agreed to pay US$1.8 billion to Malaysia as settlement for the case.
Third out of five graft cases against Najib
The joint trial with Irwan will be Najib’s third corruption case out of five.
He is currently serving his jail sentence after being convicted in July 2022 of receiving RM42 million of SRC International Sdn Bhd’s funds.
In another case, he was acquitted of tampering with 1MDB’s audit report in September last year, along with former 1MDB president Arul Kanda Kandasamy with whom he was jointly charged.
Najib also has money laundering charges involving RM27 million in SRC International funds, which are to be heard in September.
In his final case, for misappropriating RM2.27 million of 1MDB funds, the prosecution rested its case on May 30 after 235 days of trial spanning six years.
Najib’s jail sentence for his first SRC International case, however, has been halved from 12 years to six, and his RM210 million fine reduced to RM50 million – a decision made by the Federal Territories Pardons Board in January. – June 3, 2024