Najib Abdul Razak was not allowed to enter court today due to his 'yellow' MySejahtera status as being both a 'casual contact' with a possible Covid-19 positive person and a 'Person Under Surveillance'.
As a result, the former prime minister's RM2.28 billion 1MDB corruption trial before the Kuala Lumpur High Court was vacated to tomorrow.
During proceedings before trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah this morning, defence counsel Hariharan Tara Singh informed that Najib and his lead defence counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah were unable to enter court due to their respective MySejahtera status.
Shafee also had a 'yellow' status as a 'casual contact'.
"They (Najib and Shafee) were stopped by court security. She (the court staff) went inside the court and came out and instructed Shafee and Najib to refresh their MySejahtera.
"Their MySejahtera (status) turned blue, and they were allowed to enter.
"Upon arriving here (inside Collin's court), we asked them how come you are here. We told them to go to their (MySejahtera app) status and answer the (six Covid-19 status questions) accordingly," he said.
Hariharan said while in court, the MySejahtera status of Najib and Shafee flipped back to the original 'yellow' status.
"Now we were informed by the court interpreter that if it is under casual contact, they should step aside and let us submit this application," Hariharan said.
Najib and Shafee were not seen in court during proceedings.
When Sequerah asked where Najib and Shafee were, Hariharan said the duo were in the lobby outside the High Courtroom.
"I am instructing Shafee and Najib to take the RTK test. If it is negative, then inform KKM (Health Ministry) about the results," the judge directed.
Proceedings then stood down for an hour around 11 am, to allow the Covid-19 tests to be carried out on Najib and Shafee.
When proceedings resumed around 12pm, Hariharan told the court that the results were negative for Covid-19.
However, the lawyer added that Najib and Shafee's MySejahtera yellow status remains unchanged.
Sequerah then allowed proceedings to adjourn today and resume tomorrow morning.
The Kuala Lumpur Courts Complex generally only allows those with low-risk or 'blue' status to enter the premises.
Hybrid online criminal proceedings
On Tuesday and Wednesday last week, the Court of Appeal at the Palace of Justice, Putrajaya, carried out hybrid online criminal proceedings related to Najib's RM42 million SRC International corruption appeal.
The proceedings saw the Court of Appeal judges and prosecution team being present at the Palace of Justice, while Najib and his defence team followed proceedings via Zoom from another location.
This was due to Najib and large numbers of his defence team coming in close contact with a Covid-19 positive person.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak hit Malaysian shores last year, the civil jurisdiction courts have conducted many case managements and hearings fully online.
However, by comparison, the criminal jurisdiction courts generally still try for the most part to conduct trials in open court.
Concerning the ongoing graft trial before Sequerah, Najib is facing four charges of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering involving RM2.28 billion of 1MDB's funds.
1MDB is fully owned by the Minister of Finance Incorporated.
Besides being a former premier, the accused also used to be finance minister and chairperson of 1MDB's board of advisers.
The prosecution contended that fugitive businessperson Jho Low, on the behest of Najib, had acted with several other 1MDB personnel to misappropriate billions of ringgit of funds from the sovereign wealth fund and used a circuitous and complex financial route to transfer part of the funds to the then premier's personal bank account.
However, the defence team contended that Najib had no knowledge about wrongdoing at 1MDB and that Low and several other members of the sovereign wealth fund entirely masterminded the affair. - Mkini
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