I walked The Edge owner to door out of 'adab', Najib says

1MDB TRIAL | Najib Abdul Razak denied showing Tong Kooi Ong the door when The Edge Media Group chairperson tried to warn the then-prime minister over wrongdoing at 1MDB.

Najib this afternoon told the Kuala Lumpur High Court that he instead had opened the door out of adab (good manners) for the business media owner at the ex-prime minister’s residence at Langgak Duta, Kuala Lumpur, in March 2015.

The ex-finance minister admitted that Tong’s (above) visit was to air concerns over 1MDB and that he out of courtesy opened the door for the businessperson to leave as the visitor looked “tired”.

“I would like to clarify that, as we say in Malay, ‘adab’ or one’s manners. It is rooted in a sort of cultural way of doing things.

“I can categorically state that when people such as kampung people from my (then Pekan) constituency to my house, I accompany them when they go to the door.

“It is my adab. Malaysians would generally understand this point. I walked him (Tong) to the door. I do this for everyone,” Najib told trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah.

During previous trial proceedings in Najib’s RM2.27 billion 1MDB abuse of power and money laundering case, Tong testified that the then-premier did not say a word when the accused opened the door for him to leave the house in 2015.

The trial resumes tomorrow.

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.

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.

Lawyer Wan Azwan Aiman Wan Fakhruddin appeared for Najib while deputy public prosecutor Kamal Baharin Omar prosecuted.

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