Prosecution's 1MDB narrative like 'Bollywood movie', ludicrous, says Najib

1MDB TRIAL | Najib Abdul Razak rubbished the prosecution’s narrative against him as akin to a Bollywood movie.

The former prime minister this afternoon was testifying against former 1MDB general counsel Jasmine Loo’s statement that she saw an Arab donation letter being typed out by an alleged associate of fugitive businessperson Low Taek Jho (Jho Low).

During previous trial proceedings of the RM2.27 billion 1MDB abuse of power and money laundering case against Najib, Loo testified seeing Kee Kok Thiam diligently typing out the letter on his laptop in London, United Kingdom, in 2015.

Her oral evidence was over an alleged impromptu gathering at the Mayfair Hotel’s Business Centre, where she claimed being there as well as Kee and Low.

Loo claimed that Low instructed Kee to draft a letter from Saudi Arabia’s Prince Saud on the spot at the business centre.

Malicious prosecution

Najib’s defence is that he was promised a donation by Arab royalty and that Ambank officers relied on these alleged Arab donation letters as supporting documentation for the large amount of funds that flowed into his account.

“To me, this entire narrative is more like a scene from a Bollywood movie than a credible sequence of events, in fact, so ludicrous it borders on humour, yet the prosecution presented her claim which is to be believed above the others whose contemporaneous recount of events supports my defence.

“This illustration reinforces my contention that this is a malicious prosecution against me,” Najib told the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

The accused contended that he had no knowledge or involvement in wrongdoing at 1MDB and that the embezzlement was solely masterminded by Low, Low’s associates, which included Loo, and members of the fund’s management.

Najib today testified that Loo’s testimony lacks believability as she allegedly fled Malaysia as a fugitive of the law for several years before returning around the middle of last year.

The ex-premier also contended that the prosecution is not short of witnesses willing to testify on events and documents that neither happened nor existed.

Najib pointed out that Loo herself, during the 1MDB trial, admitted to receiving millions of ringgit from Low.

‘MACC never clarified with me’

Meanwhile, Najib lamented MACC’s alleged failure to double-check with him for his version of events that transpired at 1MDB.

The accused claimed that the antigraft agency’s investigating officer Nur Aida Arifin only relied on several former 1MDB management members’ versions of events and never asked him for clarification.

“Where is the fairness in that? Then again, based on what I have seen and endured, fairness seems to be a concept that does not exist in cases involving me,” Najib claimed.

He mused that this may be a reason why the MACC investigator never asked him when his statement was recorded as part of the probe, adding that perhaps his version of events may be ignored anyway if she recorded it.

“I feel that the well-established principle of law, that when there is doubt, the benefit of that doubt should go to the accused, does not appear to apply when I am the accused person.

“Instead, for the MACC and the prosecution, I have become the exception to this fundamental principle of justice,” Najib claimed.

Trial resumes on Thursday this week.

Answerable case

On Oct 30, the criminal court ordered Najib to enter his defence over four abuse of power and 21 money laundering charges involving RM2.27 billion of funds from 1MDB.

Trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah ruled that the prosecution succeeded in establishing a prima facie (answerable) case against Najib over the Minister of Finance Incorporated’s (MOF Inc) wholly owned company.

The judge ruled that Najib had to answer the charges due to the strength of the various 50 witness testimonies during the prosecution stage of proceedings that lasted six years since the trial began in 2019. The accused was first charged in 2018.

Najib is serving a six-year jail sentence over a separate abuse of power case involving RM42 million of funds from SRC International, a former subsidiary of 1MDB.

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