KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 — Datuk Seri Najib Razak yesterday finally completed his first-ever stint as a witness in his own defence in court, after spending 15 days giving his version of events regarding RM42 million from former 1MDB unit SRC International Sdn Bhd that were allegedly misappropriated and went into his personal accounts.
In this corruption trial, Najib is accused of abusing his powers as then prime minister and finance minister, and committing breach of trust in those positions, and as SRC International's advisor emeritus, besides also being accused of money-laundering when he received SRC funds totalling RM42 million in his personal AmBank accounts.
Najib had started testifying on December 3, 2019, after the court decided on November 11 that he had to enter his defence following the prosecution’s success in laying out its case with the testimony of 57 prosecution witnesses and multiple documents.
Here are six key highlights of Najib's testimony in the High Court, based on reports on his 243-page defence statement that he read out and his replies to lawyers in court:
1. Denial of own role
Najib made denials regarding many things, including denying being involved in the setting up of SRC International in January 2011 or asking for the company's constitution to be amended to give him overarching powers as the prime minister to decide company affairs.
Among other things, Najib had also claimed that he had no power as finance minister to order the civil servants' pension fund Retirement Fund Incorporated (KWAP) to approve loans to SRC and insisted that his handwritten note of approval to the KWAP CEO on SRC's initial loan application was not "absolute", also denying that he had ordered Finance Ministry officials to expedite the approval process for government guarantees to back SRC's borrowings from KWAP.
After a series of events that started with SRC International initially seeking RM3.95 billion of loans from KWAP, the 1MDB subsidiary eventually received from KWAP two government-guaranteed loans of RM2 billion each in August 2011 and March 2012.
The prosecution had previously shown documents that were verified by bank officials regarding a total RM4 billion from KWAP entering SRC's accounts, with money then shown to flow from SRC International to several other companies -- all before funds totalling RM42 million made their way into Najib's bank accounts in 2014 and early 2015.
Najib agreed he should return money wrongfully received, but said he did not return the RM42 million after news reports emerged in 2015 on the funds’ alleged SRC origin as the matter was still under investigation then.
2. Highlighting Jho Low’s role
Najib said that businessman Low Taek Jho gave the impression of being a person of influence with local and Middle Eastern royalty and who appeared to be capable of helping 1MDB achieve its goals, and also spoke of the latter's alleged roles including in asking Najib to open new bank accounts in anticipation of a purported upcoming donation from Saudi Arabia.
Najib also accused Low of giving unauthorised instructions and making unauthorised dealings regarding his bank accounts, but had later also admitted that Low's alleged manipulation of his bank accounts did not result in him losing any money and instead had seen him gain with billions worth of ringgit deposited in.
Yesterday, Najib claimed that Low had used the RM42 million as an "investment" to maintain Najib's trust in him and to prevent the uncovering of the financier's alleged scams, further alleging that this amount was "miniscule" compared to the financial gains that Low had allegedly made from the wrongdoings that Najib claimed to have been unaware of then.
3. Insistence of Saudi donation
Najib also insisted that about RM3.2 billion worth of funds that were deposited into his accounts via 23 transactions between 2011 to 2013 were purportedly donations from the Saudi royal family, adding that he had spent some of these funds on corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts and on election spending to ensure his coalition Barisan Nasional continues on to be the federal government.
Denying that he used the "donation" for vote buying in the 13th general election, Najib said he had seen it as a source of income that allowed him to be independent of other donors.
Insisting that these deposits of cash "donations" were supported by letters, Najib admitted that he had not verified the source of funds with Wisma Putra but also said Bank Negara Malaysia did not raise any red flags during 2011 to 2014.
Najib claimed to have returned over RM2.1 billion of the purported "donation".
Najib also said he had delegated the management of his bank accounts to others and insisted that he could not be held responsible if wrongdoing occured, maintaining that he had assumed the money he had spent from the accounts came from “donations”.
4. Credit card sprees
Najib also confirmed his various credit card spendings, including his purchase of a US$130,625 (RM466,330) watch at a Chanel store in Honolulu, Hawaii, US in December 2014 as a birthday present for his wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor and to placate his family when their vacation was cut short due to massive floods in Malaysia.
Najib also claimed that his €763,500 (RM3,282,734) purchase of jewellery in Swiss luxury jeweller De Grisogono's store in Italy in August 2014 during a family vacation was as a gift for a senior Qatari official's wife to maintain Malaysia's diplomatic ties with foreign leaders.
Najib admitted that he had liased directly with Low on a few occasions to ensure that his cheques and credit card transactions were honoured, agreeing that text messaging service BBM transcripts showed Low as having liaised with bank officials to ensure there were sufficient funds in Najib's accounts for the credit card transactions for the Chanel and De Grisogono purchases to go through.
5. Signature confusion
Najib refused to verify signatures on some of the documents shown to him despite having confirmed these signatures on photocopied documents when interviewed by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in the past, insisting that he needed a handwriting expert to confirm if the signatures were forged.
The prosecution even sought to challenge Najib’s credibility due to his contradictory remarks over the signatures. The court dismissed the application to impeach Najib as it accepted that he had tried to explain the contradiction.
Among other things, Najib later said he was “confused” and “misled” by the signatures that he assumed were his, and noted that he could not remember everything which happened years ago with his daily signings of multiple documents as prime minister and finance minister.
Despite having voiced suspicion that some of the photocopied documents bore forgeries of his signatures, Najib later on confirmed his signatures on other photocopied documents which he said he could verify due to them being related to simple matters.
The court has allowed Najib’s application for an Australian handwriting expert to inspect several documents to verify his signatures, with the latter expected to arrive in the week of February 10.
6. 'I'm not that stupid'
On Monday, Najib sought to assert his innocence in the entire SRC International affair by saying that he would not have acted stupidly to put stolen money into his personal bank accounts.
“A lot of people must give me credit; I not that stupid. I am maybe not the most intelligent person, but I am not stupid to do something so bizarre,” he had said.
Najib alleged that there was no basis to say he knew of the RM42 million, claiming that there was no evidence to show he had given instructions for the transfer of the RM42 million to his account or that this sum was offered to him as a bribe.
After Najib concluded his testimony as the first defence witness yesterday, former Ambank officer Krystle Yap who had testified for the prosecution called on to testify as the second defence witness.
The trial is scheduled to resume today before High Court judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali, with former Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah expected to testify as the third defence witness.
