Police to review CCTV footage from flats linked to ousted PM Najib’s family after denying ‘raid’
Police said they were concerned that the documents could be taken out of the country after a government vehicle delivered boxes to Najib’s wife
Police will check CCTV footage from a deluxe Kuala Lumpur block of flats at which relatives of ousted prime minister Najib Razak may have been staying, but the city’s police chief said an earlier Reuters report had mischaracterised the operation on Saturday as a “raid”.
Kuala Lumpur’s top cop, Mazlan Lazim, said police were acting on a complaint and were there only to recover the video footage for forensic analysis.
“You cannot call it a raid,” he said.
The police operation came as Malaysia’s new Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, said he had stopped his predecessor from leaving the country because of suspected wrongdoing in connection with a multibillion-dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB.
Senior police officers had earlier told Reuters they were acting after a complaint that a government vehicle had delivered dozens of boxes – made to carry designer handbags – to the flat for Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansor.
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Public disgust over alleged corruption was widely seen as one of the reasons behind the unexpected defeat of Najib’s long-ruling Barisan Nasional coalition in Wednesday’s general election.