NAJIB SRC TRIAL | The defence has found it difficult to produce an argument that Najib Abdul Razak was the victim of a scam, said lead counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah.
This, Shafee (above) said, is because of who Najib was.
"This man with immense power was the prime minister, and therefore I would say by virtue of the position that he was in, there's a lot of prejudice that could be drawn against him.
"As the (prosecution) would say, how could a man with such knowledge, a man of finance, power, be not aware of the full circumstances of the money coming into his account?
"Now, while that is quite attractive, I must say that the truth of the matter in our defence is, it has become complicated for us to produce the best defence possible.
"Namely because, our defence, which is a defence stating the truth, that Najib himself is a victim of a scam and series of misrepresentations by the likes of Jho Low and Nik Faisal and a bunch of rouge bankers like Joanna Yu and other senior management of SRC," he told the Kuala Lumpur High Court today during oral submissions.
Shafee said the fact that Najib was surrounded by the people who scammed him made it easy for the public and the court to be fortified in a belief that the circumstances surrounding the former prime minister would hence deprive him of defence available to a common man.
The defence has maintained Najib was unaware about the RM42 million allegedly originating from the state-owned SRC entering his bank account and was under the impression it was a "donation".
However, Shafee said several factors must be looked into in this case, such as Najib allegedly only receiving the funds into his account around three years or so after SRC International received a total of RM4 billion in loans from Retirement Fund Inc (KWAP).
He questioned if this fit into a typical pathology of corruption.
"Wouldn’t the most powerful man, if he was like that, namely corrupt in that sense, wouldn't he say 'Look, I’m giving you RM4 billion, you better give me the RM42 million upfront or even a day or two before this thing is done'?" he asked rhetorically in Najib's defence.
Late, during oral submissions, Shafee also submitted that there was no nexus between the time when Najib allegedly abused his position as then-premier to get the cabinet between late 2011 and early 2012 to pass two government guarantees for the RM4 billion in KWAP loans to SRC of which the accused allegedly received a total RM42 million between late 2014 and early 2015.
Shafee contended this was due to the distant period of time of over three years between the cabinet meetings and when Najib allegedly received the RM42 million into his personal accounts.
One of the charges against Najib, namely the one dealing with abuse of power, accuses him of having abused his position as then prime minister and finance minister to get the government to greenlight two government guarantees for the RM4 billion in loans leading to bribery involving RM42 million.
In submitting, DPP V Sithambaram argued that contrary to what had been put forth by Shafee today, there did exist precedents in court cases which posited a nexus between a corrupt act and the receiving of a bribe over a period of up to six years.
Sithambaram informed the court that the case law was, in fact, contained in the written submissions filed with the court in May this year which were among other rebuttals against the defence's submission.
Later in the afternoon, Shafee applied for oral submissions to continue for another day tomorrow as one of the defence counsel supposed to submit today, Harvinderjit Singh, was unable to attend proceedings this afternoon.
Shafee assured the court that he and Harvinderjit would be able to conclude their submissions by noon tomorrow.
In allowing the application, judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali reminded the defence that if Harvinderjit was still unable to attend court tomorrow, the defence would still need to conclude their oral submissions regardless.
Nazlan had initially scheduled three days from June 1 to June 3 to hear the oral submissions by both the defence and the prosecution.
On March 11, the defence closed its case after calling 19 witnesses during the defence stage of trial that ran for 33 days beginning Dec 3 last year.
The trial began on April 3 last year, with the prosecution calling 57 witnesses. Following this, the court ordered Najib on Nov 11 to enter his defence on seven charges linked to alleged misappropriation of RM42 million in SRC funds comprising three counts of criminal breach of trust (CBT), three counts of money- laundering and one count of abuse of position in relation to the SRC monies.
In regard to the two counts of CBT, Najib, as a public servant and agent through his posts as then prime minister and finance minister and advisor emeritus of SRC International, was alleged to have misappropriated a total of RM32 million from a sum of RM4 billion belonging to SRC.
He is charged with committing the two offences at the AmIslamic Bank Bhd branch at Jalan Raja Chulan in the capital between Dec 24, 2014, and Dec 29, 2014.
On the third CBT charge, Najib allegedly misappropriated another RM10 million at the same place between Feb 10, 2015, and March 2, 2015.
The three CBT charges are laid out under Section 409 of the Penal Code which provides a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment as well as a possible fine on conviction.
On the charge of abusing his position, Najib as then prime minister and finance minister is accused of having used his position to commit bribery involving RM42 million via his involvement in the decision to provide government guarantees for loans from the Retirement Fund Incorporated (KWAP) to SRC International amounting to RM4 billion.
He is alleged to have committed the offence at the Prime Minister's Office in Putrajaya between Aug 17, 2011, and Feb 8, 2012.
The abuse of power charge is laid out under Section 23 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009 and Section 24 of the act which provides for imprisonment of up to 20 years and a fine of not less than five times the amount or value of the bribe or RM10,000, whichever is higher, upon conviction.
Regarding the three money-laundering charges, Najib is accused of having received RM27 million, RM5 million, and RM10 million respectively from unlawful activities into his two AmIslamic Bank accounts bearing the account numbers ending in "880" and "906".
The offences were allegedly committed at the AmIslamic Bank Berhad branch at Jalan Raja Chulan in Kuala Lumpur between Dec 26, 2014, and Feb 10, 2015.
The money-laundering charges are framed under Section 4(1)(b) of the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act (AMLATFPUAA) 2001 and the former premier faces up to 15 years imprisonment and a fine of up to five times the sum or value of the illicit proceeds or RM5 million, whichever is higher, on each count, upon conviction. - Mkini
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