Hand it over, Najib tells prosecution on information given by Justo to MACC

Former PetroSaudi executive Xavier Andre Justo.

KUALA LUMPUR: Former prime minister Najib Razak has filed a motion to compel the prosecution to hand over all documents given to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission by former PetroSaudi International Ltd executive Xavier Andre Justo last year.

The application was filed on Oct 16 but served on the prosecution only this morning, before the start of Najib’s 1MDB corruption trial.

Lead prosecutor Gopal Sri Ram told trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah he would need a week to reply as he needed to take instructions.

“Anyway, Justo is not part of my brief and I do not know him,” he added.

Case management will take place on Oct 31.

On Nov 2, Justo was said to have handed over a box containing documents and files.

He was previously called in to have his statement recorded by anti-graft investigators on the 1MDB financial scandal.

Justo was a director based in PetroSaudi’s London office between February 2010 and April 2011.

He acknowledged that Najib’s name was mentioned several times in the 227,000 documents he had with him involving 1MDB. However, he did not mention the context in which Najib’s name was mentioned.

In 2015, Justo was convicted in Thailand of attempting to blackmail PetroSaudi with hundreds of thousands of emails taken from the company’s servers.

He denied the charge, saying he was holding the documents against a payment of 2.5 million Swiss francs owed to him by the company.

He was released after a year under royal amnesty and repatriated to Switzerland.

Najib is facing 25 charges of money laundering and abuse of power over alleged 1MDB funds in his AmBank accounts.

He is accused of abusing his position to obtain RM2.28 billion in bribes in February 2011 and December 2014.

He is also said to have transferred RM2.28 billion in illegal funds to his bank accounts and to have subsequently used the money. - FMT