On July 28, Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali (above) took two hours to deliver his judgment which convicted former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak.

Najib was found guilty of abuse of power, three counts of criminal breach of trust, and three counts of money laundering by pocketing RM42 million from the Finance Ministry-owned firm SRC International Sdn Bhd between 2014 and 2015.

He was the finance minister and prime minister at the material time.

Although Nazlan's entire written judgment - a crucial document needed for Najib’s appeal - has yet to be released, "extracts" of the judgment have been shared with the lawyers involved in the case.

The judgment mostly outlined Nazlan's deliberations on points raised by the defence team, as his reasons for convicting Najib were already laid out at the end of the prosecution's case in November 2019.

Below is a summary of the key issues raised by the judge on Tuesday.

It doesn’t matter what Apandi Ali said in 2016

Defence witnesses former DPP Dzukifli Ahmad and former attorney-general Apandi Ali attempted to cast doubts on the prosecution’s case by testifying that the latter had cleared the accused of wrongdoing in relation to SRC International in January 2016.

Nazlan noted that since then, the MACC had recorded statements from 76 new witnesses and taken more statements from existing witnesses.

"Even though (Apandi) and (Dzulkifli) decided that the investigations had by then been completed based on what had been gathered by the MACC as recorded in the investigation papers, for the purpose of this instant or any trial, any pronouncement of this court must be based on evidence produced to the court trying the case.

"To put it simply, the opinion of (Apandi) and (Dzukifli) cannot...