Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak on Tuesday was ordered to serve his jail sentence, after the nation’s highest court upheld his conviction on several counts of corruption involving a former unit of scandal-tainted fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
“These appeals are therefore unanimously dismissed and the conviction and sentence are affirmed,” the Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat said on behalf of a five-judge panel.
The judges left the court after the judgment was read, and a stoic-looking Najib was immediately surrounded by family members. His wife Rosmah Mansor – facing criminal cases of her own – as well as daughter Nooryana, and sons Ashman and Nizar, were present in court.
It was not immediately clear if Najib would be transported to prison immediately. Previously, high-profile figures such as the reformist opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim were detained in Sungai Buloh Prison, near Kuala Lumpur.
Najib can still file a judicial review for the courts to decide if the latest judgment was illegal, irrational, unreasonable or involved procedural impropriety, but he must begin serving his sentence first.
The ex-leader could also seek a royal pardon from Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, Malaysia’s reigning king who hails from Pahang state where Najib’s parliamentary seat of Pekan is located.
A royal pardon – such as the one Anwar obtained in 2018 – could see Najib’s jail sentence commuted, and allow him to continue participating in politics.
As it stands, Najib’s conviction and the exhaustion of the appeal process means that he immediately loses the Pekan parliamentary seat that he has held since 1976.
He entered frontline politics after the death of his father, the country’s highly respected second prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein.
Before the judgment, Najib said he felt he had been deprived of justice in the Federal Court’s decision to dismiss his applications to postpone the hearing to allow his new counsel, led by Hisyam Teh Poh Tiek, to prepare for the case.
He said the decision was akin to being taken out of a contest “that affects my liberty”.
“I feel this is not cricket at all as there is total unfairness executed on me … This Honourable Court seems to be overly concerned about the time allotted for this appeal, and that any adjournment would posed inconvenience to this Court and perhaps the Prosecution,” Najib said when reading out a prepared statement from the dock.
“But, Yang Arif, surely in the light of what I have said and what would be said later on, must justice be sacrificed at the alter of convenience?” he said, referring to the Chief Justice.
Hisyam, Najib’s lawyer, told reporters “we are very sad [and] we seek comfort and solace in the fact that the almighty can dispense ultimate justice”.
The Federal Court’s ruling is a landmark moment in the years-long effort by anti-corruption activists to bring to justice those responsible for the plunder of 1MDB, which was founded and controlled by Najib during his 2009-2018 tenure as prime minister.
The case involves some 42 million ringgit (US$9.4 million) that flowed from SRC International, a former subsidiary of the 1MDB state fund, to his personal accounts.
High Court Judge Nazlan Ghazali in 2020 sentenced the former prime minister to 12 years’ jail and fined him 210 million ringgit for the abuse of power charge, 10 years’ jail for each of the criminal breach of trust charges and 10 years’ jail for each of the money laundering charges. The jail terms are to run concurrently.
The SRC case is regarded as the least complex of the five trials linked to Najib from the scandal.
