Ex-1MDB chair: Najib called me before I testified at PAC
Former 1MDB chairperson Mohd Bakke Salleh testified that he attended two meetings where he was to be issued “guidelines” on giving his testimony to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Feb 11, 2016.
Bakke told the Kuala Lumpur High Court today that then prime minister Najib Abdul Razak instructed him to attend the meetings.
The court heard that Najib did not want...
Former 1MDB chairperson Mohd Bakke Salleh testified that he attended two meetings where he was to be issued “guidelines” on giving his testimony to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Feb 11, 2016.
Bakke told the Kuala Lumpur High Court today that then prime minister Najib Abdul Razak instructed him to attend the meetings.
The court heard that Najib did not want his name, or that of businessperson Jho Low, included in testimonies to the PAC.
Bakke (above) testified that the two meetings - which allegedly transpired two weeks before the PAC hearing - were conducted by then PAC chairperson Hasan Arifin and were at the home of then TV3 managing director Ahmad Farid Ridzuan.
The witness claimed he received a telephone call from Najib instructing him to attend the meetings. He said former 1MDB CEO Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi was at the first meeting while Shahrol’s successor Arul Kanda Kandasamy was at the subsequent meeting.
“If I could recall the kind of words used by the PM in the telephone call, it was two weeks before the PAC hearing.
“He wanted me to meet Hasan and Farid just to make sure we all understood roughly what needed to be said to the PAC.
“At the time, it was to support the reputation of the PM as there was a worry of a fallout from the 1MDB saga,” Bakke claimed.
“The meetings were to come up with a certain kind of guidelines for when (Bakke testifies) at the PAC so as not to reveal something sensitive that could create a ripple effect, that was how I interpreted it,” Bakke told trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah.
The witness testified that the impression he got from the two meetings was that Hasan and Farid were trying to get him to “not be too hard” during his testimony to the PAC.
Bakke contended that he did not allow these meetings to influence him.
In 2019, during a separate criminal trial against Najib and Arul Kanda over the 1MDB audit report, Shahrol had testified attending a seemingly similar meeting with then Kota Belud MP Abdul Rahman Dahlan, where he was allegedly asked to downplay Najib and Low’s role in the affair.
Bakke is the 15th prosecution witness in the trial against Najib Abdul Razak, who stood accused of laundering 1MDB’s money.
Was there an SMS?
Bakke got into a verbal tussle with defence lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah over whether the former told the PAC that he sent a short messaging service (SMS) message to Najib in 2009 over concerns of wrongdoing at 1MDB.
As Najib looked on from the dock, Shafee showed in court a copy of the Hansard over the PAC hearing and pointed out that Bakke made no mention he ever sent such an SMS to Najib, and only told the parliamentary committee that he informed his concerns to the Finance Ministry.
However, Bakke reiterated that despite the PAC report making no mention of the SMS, his style of speaking and behaviour would have resulted in him mentioning the SMS to the PAC.
Previously, the witness testified that he sent the SMS to Najib in late 2009 over concerns with what was transpiring in 1MDB, adding that he found it unusual that the then premier did not reply to the message. Bakke later resigned in October of that year.
Bakke also previously testified that he suspected Najib was involved in irregular transactions at 1MDB.
The hearing before Sequerah continues today.
25 charges
Najib is on trial for four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering involving RM2.28 billion of 1MDB’s funds.
The prosecution contended that the wrongdoing at 1MDB was done by Low under the authority of Najib.
The defence team claimed the accused had no knowledge of wrongdoing and that the whole embezzlement scheme was solely masterminded by Low and several members of the fund’s management team.
Besides being a former premier and finance minister, Najib also used to be the chairperson of 1MDB’s board of advisers.
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