KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — Former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s criminal breach of trust (CBT) trial involving RM6.64 billion in government funds paid to the International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) which began at the High Court today, has been postponed to give parties more time to put together a proper defence.
In this trial, Najib is also jointly charged with former Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah, who is the second accused.
At the start of today's hearing, lawyers Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah and Datuk K. Kumaraendran acting for the two accused informed the court they were not served with what they said were key documents needed to prepare their client's defence.
Muhammad Shafee appeared for Najib while Kumaraendran appeared for Irwan Serigar.
According to the lawyers, the documents involved memos from the Cabinet, Finance Ministry and Finance Ministry (Incorporated), including correspondences referred to in the 48 witness statements served by the prosecution prior to the trial's commencement.
"We were served with the 48 witness statements and upon checking the statements, we found to date there were over 100 missing documents. These are very important documents which were never served on us at all
"Unless the documents are given to us, we cannot prepare our defence, that is all," Kumaraedran told trial judge Datuk Muhammad Jamil Hussin.
Kumaraendran also said that Irwan Serigar had amended his statement to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) but the amended statement was not given to the defence.
Muhammad Shafee echoed Kumaraedran, stating it was understood that more documents were required to be served and urged the court to adjourn the trial to a later date in the interest of justice.
He also said there were ongoing cases related to the current trial, namely the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) trial and the SRC International Sdn Bhd civil suit, which he said was causing “distractions” due to the amount of workload posed to his team.
"This is distracting me in the sense there is a lot of work to be done.
"There are two things Yang Arif ought to know, there are many issues there [1MDB trial] similar to issues here, so Yang Arif it is a good idea to see how 1MDB pans out.
"The other aspect is we need to take an adjournment to get all the documents ready," he said.
Deputy prosecution head II Muhammad Saifuddin Hashim Musaimi said the prosecution has no objections to the defences' request.
Muhammad Saifuddin said prosecutors had served the defence a total of four times since 2018, but conceded that his team needed to check the list of documents served by the previous prosecution team handling the case.
"There are many documents and to narrow them down to which will be used by the parties, we will have to relook at them.
"For the sake of the trial's continuity and justice to the accused, I have no objections if the trial is temporarily adjourned in order for parties to sort out the documents so everyone is prepared," he said.
The trial judge then vacated the hearing dates from today until June 13 to provide the defence the opportunity to go over the documents they had requested and prepare their defence.
However, he told them that they should have made this request earlier to save everyone’s time.
"Two weeks is sufficient for the defence to study the documents, trial will start on June 19 and continue on the dates that have been fixed previously," he said.
The IPIC trial is Najib's fourth criminal trial after the SRC International Sdn Bhd criminal trial, the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) trial and the audit report tampering trial.
In October 2018, Najib and Mohd Irwan Serigar pleaded not guilty to six charges of CBT amounting to RM6.6 billion in government funds involving payments to IPIC.
Najib and Mohd Irwan Serigar were jointly accused of committing all the offences at the Finance Ministry Complex, Putrajaya between December 21, 2016, and December 18, 2017.
They were charged under Section 409 of the Penal Code read together with Section 34 of the same code which provides for a maximum of 20 years in jail and whipping as well as fine upon conviction.
Imprisoned since August 23, 2022, Najib is serving his 12-year jail sentence and RM210 million fine for his conviction over the misappropriation of SRC International’s RM42 million funds, which has recently been reduced to six years of jail and RM50 million fine by the Pardons Board.
