KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court has fixed a three-week trial from April 15 to hear Najib Razak’s 21 money laundering charges and four charges of power abuse linked to 1MDB.
Justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah fixed the date after the case was mentioned for the first time before him today.
Najib was initially charged before Sessions Court judge Azura Alwi on Sept 20 but he applied for the case to be transferred to the High Court.
Ad-hoc senior deputy public prosecutor Gopal Sri Ram told Sequerah that the prosecution was expected to take three weeks to complete its case and that includes time to cross-examine witnesses.“We have 52 witnesses on the list but not all will be called,” he told the court.
Earlier, the charges were read again and Najib claimed trial.
It took 30 minutes for an interpreter to read the charges and Najib merely nodded his head.
Najib’s lead defence lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, who was reluctant to begin the trial in May, said he would be filing an application to disqualify Sri Ram as prosecutor.
“We will file the application in the High Court next week,” he said.
Speaking to reporters later, Shafee said the defence wanted to recuse Sri Ram because he was “totally in conflict of interest”.
Najib is facing four counts of corruption in which he is alleged to have used his position to obtain gratification totalling RM2.3 billion and 21 charges of money laundering of a similar amount.
The Pekan MP is said to have received and used the illegal money during his term of office between 2011 and 2014. - FMT
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