Najib should ‘walk free’ since his 1MDB story backed by Saudi donation letters, his lawyer tells court

PUTRAJAYA, Oct 24 — Former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak should be acquitted of misusing his position to misappropriate billions of ringgit from sovereign investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), his lawyer argued in the High Court today.

Lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah said Najib has four donation letters to back his claim that he had received RM2 billion as donations from Saudi Arabia, adding that they were more credible than the testimony given by the prosecution’s key witness Jasmine Loo about money in her company account.

“Then my client should walk free, because my client had the backing of every document unlike Jasmine Loo, he had got the four donation letters and all other things.

“He has got a more credible story as compared to the flimsy story of Jasmine Loo,” Shafee said.

Loo was formerly the 1MDB in-house lawyer.

Najib has been insisting that the over RM2 billion which entered his personal bank accounts were not 1MDB’s money but Saudi donations.

The prosecution has disputed those four letters as being fabricated.

Another lawyer on the defence team Wan Azwan Aiman Wan Fakhruddin also challenged Loo’s credibility as a prosecution witness against Najib.

Among others, he pointed to the millions of US dollars that had been banked into the bank account of Loo’s company River Dee International SA.

During trial today, judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah asked what Loo had answered about the money in River Dee and if she knew where the money came from.

Another defence lawyer Tania Scivetti replied that under questioning in court previously, Loo said she received the money as she was in a joint venture with Low Taek Jho.

“And I asked her ‘do you have any documents to support that?’ She said ‘no’,” Scivetti told the judge.

Shafee later suggested that Loo’s claim that the money in River Dee was from a joint venture with Low could not be believed as she did not have documents to prove this.

Shafee said Loo was formerly a corporate lawyer in one of the most eminent law firms in Kuala Lumpur.

“Can we believe she doesn’t have a single document to testify to the fact that this money she received without knowledge that it came from 1MDB, and that this was a joint venture with Jho Low, and Jho Low was giving and giving and she was taking?” 

Shafee highlighted that Loo had previously been on the run abroad before returning home to testify as a prosecution witness in Najib’s 1MDB trial.

“But what is critical is, we have also proven in this court, and Jasmine Loo admitted that Jasmine Loo was a fugitive on the run with Jho Low.

“And there were many times they were in the same country like China, like Myanmar, and Jho Low assisted her to be brought in illegally without her passport being stamped and so on. 

“Contrast that with my client, my client doesn’t have that kind of relationship with Jho Low. There is no proof Jho Low has done services of that nature for Datuk Seri Najib,” he said.

Low, whose full name is Low Taek Jho, remains a fugitive whose whereabouts are unknown.

Najib’s 1MDB trial resumes next week.