Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak abused his power to steal billions from the state to “enrich himself” and then conducted an elaborate charade to cover his tracks, prosecutors in Kuala Lumpur have said.
The first day of the trial of Najib over his alleged involvement in a vast corruption scandal opened on Wednesday, after months of delays, with a blistering summary of his alleged crimes by the chief prosecutor, Gopal Sri Ram.
The 1MDB affair, which was exposed in 2015, has been described as the “biggest kleptocracy scandal in the world”. More than $4.5bn of state money was embezzled from a Malaysian government fund, known as 1MDB, and spent lavishly in Malaysia and around the world on everything from Manhattan real estate and diamonds to Pablo Picasso paintings and financing Hollywood films.
Najib, who served as Malaysia’s prime minister for nine years before being toppled from power last year, faces 25 charges, including abuse of power. He is accused of transferring 2.3bn ringgit (£440m) out of 1MDB – almost a quarter of its funds. Najib denies all the charges and says he was misled by others involved in the running of the fund.
Malaysia’s extraordinary 1MDB corruption scandal allegedly involved billions being stolen from the country’s sovereign wealth fund and spent on everything from Hollywood films to handbags.
Former prime minister Najib Razak was arrested in the 1MDB corruption inquiry set up by his successor, which engulfed the ex-leader and his cronies and resulted in his loss at elections in May 2018.
1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) is a state investment fund that Najib launched in 2009 shortly after becoming prime minister.
Its portfolio has included power stations and other energy assets in Malaysia and the Middle East, and real estate in Kuala Lumpur.
The fund was closely overseen by Najib.
Whistleblowers say Low Taek Jho, or ‘Jho Low’, a shadowy, jet-setting Malaysian financier close to Najib but who has no official positions, helped set up 1MDB and made key financial decisions.
Jho has now been charged with conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB by the US Department of Justice, though he remains at large.
After the scandal emerged, Najib purged 1MDB critics from his government, curbed domestic investigations, enacted a tough new security law and generally lurched to the right.
But the issue exploded in July 2015, when the Wall Street Journal published documents showing Najib received at least $681m (£518m) in payments to his personal bank accounts.
The US justice department has piled on the pressure by filing lawsuits to seize $1.7bn in assets it said were purchased with stolen 1MDB money.
Najib’s dramatic election loss in 2018 left him facing the possibility of prosecution and imprisonment.
The election winner, 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, pledged to investigate the scandal and try to recover stolen funds from 1MDB that have been sent abroad.
In his opening speech, Gopal said Najib was “pivotal” in the plundering of the 1MDB fund and then “interfered with the course of investigation of this case … He took active steps to effect a cover-up of his criminal acts”.
Gopal said the relationship between the Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, and Najib would be central to the prosecution’s case.
Low was brought in as an informal consultant to 1MDB and became notorious for his ostentatious lifestyle, including buying swathes of Manhattan real estate and partying with celebrities, which it is alleged was funded by stolen 1MDB money. Low’s location is unknown. He has denied all the charges.
Gopal said Najib had “made it clear to 1MDB’s officers, its board and others that Jho Low was his alter ego. In truth, Jho Low was the accused’s mirror image … they acted as one”.
Najib and Low had produced “sham documents” to “cover his tracks”, including letters and four cheques totalling $25m to pretend the stolen 1MDB money was a donation from an Arab prince, Gopal said. “But these cheques were never meant to be cashed and were never cashed,” said Gopal.
Najib is the first former Malaysian prime minister to be charged with crimes carried out while in office. His lawyer, Shafee Abdullah, had unsuccessfully attempted to delay the start of the 1MDB trial to September, claiming his team needed more time to prepare after the prosecution handed him thousands of pages of documents, but last week the judge ruled it would go ahead. Six witnesses were due to be called by the prosecution on Wednesday.
It will be the second trial the former prime minister has faced, and it is likely he will face a third. On Tuesday, proceedings wrapped up for Najib’s first trial, which related to SRC International, a subsidiary fund of 1MDB. Najib is alleged to have siphoned an estimated $10m from SRC into his personal bank accounts, charges he also denies.
During the SRC trial, the profligate spending habits of Najib and his wife, Rosmah Mansor, were described in court, including Najib spending $800,000 in a single day at a luxury Swiss jeweller in Italy.
However, the 1MDB trial is considered the most significant, both for Malaysia and internationally. There are 1MDB investigations taking place in 12 countries, and in the US, the justice department recently charged two former Goldman Sachs bankers with conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled from Malaysia’s state development fund.
