Najib gets house arrest - but how he'll be tracked remains unclear

 

After spending 1,487 days behind bars, former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak has been granted a conditional pardon - allowing him to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest.

But there is an expensive caveat.

The Federal Territories Pardons Board, chaired by Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar, has made the arrangement conditional on Najib paying a RM50 million fine and complying with all conditions imposed under the pardon.

In a statement announcing the board’s decision, the Legal Affairs Division under the Prime Minister’s Department (Bheuu) said Najib must comply with all conditions attached to the conditional pardon.

Should he breach any of those conditions, the conditional pardon will be cancelled and he must immediately return to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence, which is due to end on Aug 23, 2028.

Najib was arrested in July 2018, shortly after BN lost federal power for the first time since independence.

He was first charged in the SRC International case on July 4 that year, facing three counts of criminal breach of trust and one count of abusing his position over RM42 million belonging to SRC International.

Three money-laundering charges involving the same sum were added the following month.

After a lengthy trial, the High Court convicted Najib on all seven charges in July 2020 and sentenced him to 12 years in prison, alongside a RM210 million fine.

The Court of Appeal upheld both his conviction and sentence in December 2021.

On Aug 23, 2022, the Federal Court dismissed his final appeal and ordered him to begin serving his sentence at Kajang Prison that same day.

First pardon petition

With his final avenue of appeal exhausted, Najib turned to the constitutional clemency process, submitting his first petition for a royal pardon on Sept 2, 2022.

The application was considered by the Federal Territories Pardons Board at its 61st meeting on Jan 29, 2024, chaired by the then-Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah (below).

The board subsequently halved his 12-year prison sentence to six years and reduced the RM210 million fine to RM50 million.

The decision brought forward his scheduled release date to Aug 23, 2028, subject to payment of the reduced fine.

If the fine was not paid, the order stipulated an additional year in prison, extending his release date to Aug 23, 2029.

Notably, Aug 23, 2028 was already the date on which Najib’s SRC International sentence was due to end.

The RM50 million he must now pay as a condition of serving the remainder of his sentence under house arrest is also the same amount to which his original RM210 million fine was reduced under the 2024 pardon.

The addendum issue

The 2024 decision, however, did not end the matter. Najib subsequently maintained that the former king had also issued a separate addendum allowing him to serve the remainder of his sentence at home.

In April 2024, Najib filed an application for judicial review at the High Court, seeking recognition of the alleged addendum and an order compelling the authorities to implement it.

His application was based on his contention that the order dated Jan 29, 2024, allowed him to serve the remaining six years of his sentence under house arrest.

The matter eventually proceeded to a substantive hearing. In December 2025, the High Court dismissed Najib’s application, finding that the proposed house-arrest arrangement had neither been deliberated on nor decided by the Pardons Board when it met on Jan 29, 2024.

Justice Alice Loke held that the order therefore did not comply with Article 42 of the Federal Constitution and could not be enforced.

The court also described the proposed house-arrest arrangement as unprecedented, noting that it would fundamentally alter the nature of the imprisonment imposed by the court.

Najib subsequently withdrew his appeal against the High Court’s ruling in April this year.

Second pardon application

Najib then returned to the Pardons Board with another application for clemency, which was due to be considered at its 63rd meeting on Sept 11, 2026.

However, Sultan Ibrahim consented to defer a decision to a future meeting. The official statement at the time did not disclose the specific relief being sought, nor did it provide a date for the next sitting, which eventually took place today.

At present, there is no publicly documented precedent of the Pardons Board granting house arrest as a form of clemency.

Indeed, the High Court’s ruling in Najib’s case specifically described the alleged house-arrest order as without precedent.

The Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) also stated in December 2024 that any proposal for a prisoner, including Najib, to serve the remainder of a sentence under house arrest would have to be submitted to the Pardons Board.

How will Najib be monitored?

It remains unclear how the Home Ministry and Prisons Department will manage the procedural arrangements to ensure Najib complies with the conditions of his house arrest.

Malaysiakini has reached out to both agencies for comment and is awaiting their responses.

The possibility of Najib being fitted with an electronic monitoring device (EMD), commonly pictured as an ankle tag, has also surfaced in public discussion.

However, the legal basis for such an arrangement is not as straightforward as it might appear.

While Malaysia does have electronic monitoring device (EMD) provisions in its statute books, these are found within preventive-detention laws that were never designed for someone in Najib’s position.

The Prevention of Crime Act (Poca) and the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (Sosma) allow for electronic monitoring, but these are tools aimed at organised crime detainees and security or terrorism suspects respectively, typically as an alternative to remand or as a condition of restricted residence.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act (Pota), meanwhile, operates along similar lines, targeting individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism-related activities.

None of these statutes were framed with a convicted person serving a court-imposed prison sentence at home in mind. It is therefore difficult to see how they could be invoked to fit an EMD on someone in Najib’s circumstances.

The more relevant piece of legislation is the Prisons (Amendment) Bill 2026, which would explicitly empower the commissioner-general of Prisons to order an EMD to be fitted on inmates in custody, on licence or on parole.

This is precisely the kind of provision that would give legal teeth to an arrangement such as Najib’s.

However, the bill remains stuck in the legislative pipeline. Following its first reading in June 2026, MPs raised objections over an unrelated immunity clause for prison officers, and the bill was subsequently referred to two parliamentary select committees for further scrutiny. It has yet to be passed.

This leaves a legal gap. Without the Prisons (Amendment) Bill coming into force, there is currently no clear statutory mechanism under the Prisons Act 1995 for imposing electronic monitoring on someone serving a sentence under house arrest pursuant to a royal pardon.

The pardon itself derives its authority from the king’s constitutional power of clemency, rather than from the Prisons Act.

So how compliance with the house-arrest terms will actually be verified - whether through an EMD, periodic reporting, physical checks by prison or police personnel, or some other arrangement remains an open question.

1MDB conviction

In December last year, the High Court convicted Najib on 25 charges in the separate 1MDB case - four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering involving RM2.3 billion linked to the scandal - and sentenced him to 15 years in prison as well as a RM11.38 billion fine.

He has appealed against the conviction and sentence.

In the grounds of judgment released in June, then High Court judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah described the scale of the financial plunder in the 1MDB case as so vast that it made Attila the Hun “look like a choirboy”.

The fresh clemency for Najib also comes amid renewed political tensions between Pakatan Harapan and Umno, exposing further fissures within the Madani government.

Ahead of the previous Pardons Board meeting, Harapan had maintained that individuals convicted of corruption or abuse of power, particularly in high-profile cases, should serve the full sentences imposed by the courts.

Umno, meanwhile, criticised Harapan’s position, with party secretary-general Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki accusing the coalition of questioning the constitutional powers of the Malay rulers.

'Not accorded fair trial'

The debate also revived concerns about the implications of further clemency for Najib, including whether it could fuel perceptions of double standards in the application of the rule of law.

Najib’s supporters, including senior Umno leaders, have maintained that he was not accorded a fair trial and have repeatedly pressed for further royal clemency.

Najib became Malaysia’s sixth prime minister on April 3, 2009, succeeding Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. His political downfall came at the 14th general election on May 9, 2018.

Harapan's victory, led by Najib’s predecessor Dr Mahathir Mohamad, was driven in significant part by public anger over the 1MDB scandal, which by then had become a defining issue of Najib’s administration. - Mkini