Datuk Seri Najib Razak is pictured at the Kuala Lumpur High Court May 20, 2021. ― Picture by Hari Anggara
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KUALA LUMPUR, May 20 — Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s lawyers today sought to suggest that the now fugitive Low Taek Jho was akin to an octopus who had global reach in his scheme involving government-owned firm 1Malaysia Development Berhad’s (1MDB) funds.
In Najib’s ongoing trial today, his lawyers sought to highlight Low’s role in the siphoning of hundreds of millions of US dollars from 1MDB unit 1MDB Global Investments Limited’s (1MDB GIL) bank accounts into companies controlled or owned by Low, as part of Najib’s defence against the power abuse and money laundering charges in the trial.
In seeking to lay out part of Najib’s defence in the trial in relation to more than RM2 billion of 1MDB funds, his lawyer Wan Aizuddin Wan Mohammed went through excerpts of a January 18, 2017 news report by financial paper The Edge in court.
The news report contained the full statement of facts by the Singapore attorney general on a trial in Singapore where Falcon Private Bank’s Singapore branch manager Jens Fred Sturzenegger was convicted in relation to millions of US dollars originating from 1MDB and flowing to and through Falcon Private Bank accounts of four entities allegedly ultimately controlled by Low.
Wan Aizuddin was highlighting various portions of the statement of facts in the Singapore case as reported by The Edge, asking 1MDB former CEO Mohd Hazem Abd Rahman — who is the 10th prosecution witness in Najib’s case — about the matters disclosed in the Singapore case.
At one point, High Court judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah questioned the purpose of Najib’s lawyer reading out extensively the facts from the 2017 Singapore case, when Mohd Hazem said he did not have knowledge of such contents.
Wan Aizuddin then said that he would only read out specific portions that were “very relevant” to Najib’s defence, saying: “This forms part of our defence that the real person, the real thief is Jho Low.”
Wan Aizuddin explained that Mohd Hazem was also the director of 1MDB GIL and was in control of the company’s funds, saying that he was using the 2017 article to show Mohd Hazem where all the funds from 1MDB GIL’s bank account — which initially had US$2.7 billion in March 2013 — had went to and that he had to confront the former 1MDB man whether he knew of such transactions.
Najib’s lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah then said the legal team had asked Singapore lawyers to obtain the actual transcript from the Singapore courts instead of just basing it on The Edge article and as Najib has an interest in it, but said such a request was denied by the courts.
“I can’t believe it when they said no, it’s shocking, they should be transparent. It’s a public document, they said ‘no’, we can’t give it to you. The Singapore lawyers were denied. They gave no reason, just as we had similar problems in New York, all these are highly democratic countries,” Shafee said.
Shafee said that the facts were important to show how 1MDB funds that went to Tanore Financial Corporation was in an account that was being “manipulated by one man” in secrecy, referring to Low.
“Jho Low is like an octopus, plenty of tentacles reaching out to everybody throughout the globe, that’s what we want to show,” he said.
Najib’s 1MDB trial involving 25 charges is scheduled to resume on Monday, with about 70 days of hearing so far including today.
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