Najib Razak, former PM of Malaysia, tampered with 1MDB evidence, court told

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak ordered the removal of material information from an investigation report into beleaguered state investment fund 1MDB to avoid civil or criminal liability, prosecutors contended on Monday at a hearing of his third criminal trial.

Lead prosecutor Gopal Sri Ram, in his opening statement, said Najib was abetted by Arul Kanda, the former chief executive of 1Malaysia Development Berhad, who together with Najib pleaded not guilty at the Kuala Lumpur High Court to charges of tampering with an audit report on the scandal-plagued fund.

“The accused used his position as the prime minister and the minister of finance to direct the removal of material information,” Gopal told the court. “The prosecution will show that the accused Najib did what he did in order to avoid civil or criminal liability that would have visited him as a shadow director of 1MDB as well as in his positions as prime minister and minister of finance.”

Najib’s once iron-fisted rule crumbled following an historic election in May last year that ended the Barisan Nasional coalition’s 60-year grip on power.

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Since then, the former prime minister has been slapped with a total of 42 charges that cover money laundering, abuse of power and criminal breach of trust in connection with 1MDB and its former subsidiary SRC International.

He now has back-to-back hearings on three separate trials, including this one on tampering for “personal gratification”.

Najib is slated to testify on December 3 in his first trial where he was indicted with seven charges of misappropriating 42 million ringgit (US$10 million) from SRC International.

A second trial, where he was slapped with 25 charges over the nearly US$700 million that was found in his personal bank accounts that is said to have originated from 1MDB, will resume on January 6 after a break since the trial began in August.

The third trial stems from a probe conducted by the then auditor-general when the 1MDB scandal broke in 2015.

The charges of abuse of power against Najib and of abetment against Arul, both punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine if convicted, concerned amendments made to the audit report before it was submitted to the bipartisan parliamentary Public Accounts Committee in March 2016.

Najib is accused of instructing certain paragraphs in the audit report to be dropped or amended after a series of meetings in his office between February 22 and 26, 2016.

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Attendees in the meetings included Arul and the auditor-general at the time who prepared the report.

The report revealed that 1MDB, which Najib founded in 2009, had incurred debts to the tune of 50 billion ringgit (US$12 billion) in a span of six years.

Arul, who headed the fund from January 2015 until June 2018, has been widely criticised for allegedly helping cover up abuse that went on there to protect Najib. Gopal informed the court that the prosecution intends to call Arul to testify on the prosecution’s behalf.

“One of the steps that Najib took to cover his tracks on the extent of his role and that of Jho Low in the business and affairs of 1MDB gives rise to the charge in this case. His objective was to conceal the truth,” Gopal said, referring to fugitive financier Jho Low, who is also known as Low Taek Jho.

For years, Najib has denied that Low, a tycoon and a close ally of his, had a hand in 1MDB’s operation.

The United States, which is investigating 1MDB for money laundering, has pointed to Low as the mastermind behind what it claimed was one of the world’s biggest frauds.

It suspects that some $4.5 billion has been misappropriated from the fund to finance the luxury lifestyles of Low and his cronies including Najib’s stepson.

Low, his father and four 1MDB officials have been charged in absentia in Malaysia for money laundering. All the accused have fled the country and are now on Interpol’s wanted list.