The prosecution and defence in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s SRC International trial wrapped up their submissions yesterday, and both sides expressed optimism of having made their case.
Lead prosecutor Datuk V Sithambaram said the prosecution was confident it had proven its case against Najib on all seven charges and therefore he should be ordered to enter his defence.
He said the prosecution was not relying on hollow submissions to make its case against the accused.
Instead, he said, the prosecution had made its case based on evidence of witnesses and a host of contemporaneous documents to prove the charges against Najib.
“It is our submission that the entire defence taken by the accused was an afterthought. The money that went in and out of his account during the entire period the offences committed was well within his knowledge.
“To only now, during the trial, say it was Jho Low who operated his account is not credible and farfetched… It is unthinkable for the accused not to have known,” he said, adding such an excuse was preposterous.
Sithambaram said the prosecution had filed complete written submissions and also made oral clarification about the entire case and it was now up to the judge to decide.
“Finally, it is not what the prosecution or defence says that matter, but the judge’s evaluation of evidence presented to him that will decide whether there is a prima facie case for the accused to answer,” he said.
Earlier, the prosecution urged the High Court to admit all documentary evidence but that it is up to the court to determine how much weight should be given to them.
Sithambaram was responding to the defence, which asked trial judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali to ignore some 70 documents as evidence as they are not original documents and its makers were not called to testify.
Meanwhile, Najib’s lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah also expressed similar confidence and said the defence was hoping to get a full acquittal, or at the very least, some of the charges dropped.
“It’s like tossing a coin now…anything can happen,” he told reporters after wrapping up his submissions.
Earlier, he submitted that his client had no guilty knowledge of the offences and there was no dishonesty on Najib’s end concerning SRC International operations.
He said it did not make sense for Najib to have hijacked all the money which he was accused of taking, send it all over the world and then get it banked into his own personal account with full knowledge of Bank Negara before spending it openly.
“What kind of a fool would do that?”
Shafee said the court should refrain from ordering Najib to enter his defence just to hear what he has to say, including on Jho Low’s role in the whole mess.
“We can’t ask him questions on why Jho Low did this and that. We are dealing with a con man here…how are we to read his mind.
“We don’t know whether he was hooking and fishing or fishing and hooking.”
Shafee said Najib was transparent when he opened his bank account with AmBank in 2011 and even the then Bank Negara Malaysia governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz was kept informed.
However, he said it was Jho Low. with the assistance of some rogue bankers. who manipulated Najib’s accounts.
“When the bank asked for alternate names for his accounts, it was Jho Low who gave the names,” he said.
Shafee said Najib had given the mandate to the then SRC International Sdn Bhd CEO Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil to handle his bank accounts but it was revealed in court that Jho Low was playing the function.
Shafee said there was no case of abuse of power committed by Najib as he had no interest in SRC, which was a government-linked company.
“This is because Section 23 (4) provided immunity to him as the then prime minister and finance minister when he represented another public body like SRC,” he said.
Najib, he said, could not have misappropriated RM42 million as that money was not from SRC but part of a donation from an Arab prince.
The lawyer said Najib’s money laundering charges also crumbled when the prosecution failed to prove the predicate offences of abuse of power and CBT.
On questions why Najib had never bothered to lodge a police report after finding out that RM42 million had been deposited into his bank account, Shafee said it was because his client wanted to avoid being accused of interfering in ongoing investigations.
He cited how Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had been accused of interfering in an investigation after he filed a police report in relation to a case that was being investigated.
“Najib did not want to fall into the same trap,” he said.
According to Najib’s lawyer Harvinderjit Singh, Sarawak Report revealed on July 2, 2015, that investigations had begun on SRC International and the RM2.6 billion also found in Najib’s accounts.
“After the report was published, the matter becomes public. The MACC, police, Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) began investigating his accounts on July 6, 2015.
“By July, the investigating agencies were looking into this matter…so what was the need for a report?” he said.
Harvinderjit also said it was public knowledge that on Jan 26, 2016, then-attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali cleared Najib of any wrongdoing in relation to the SRC International case and the RM2.6 billion “donation”, purportedly from an Arab prince.
Earlier, another one of Najib’s lawyers, Farhan Read, said the accused should be acquitted without his defence being called as there was nothing to show he had knowledge of offences that were committed.
“The smoking gun is missing in this case,” he said.
Judge Nazlan will decide at 10am on Nov 11 whether Najib should be called to enter his defence.
A total of 57 witnesses were called by the prosecution to testify in the trial which began in April.
Najib, 66, is accused of committing one charge of abuse of power, three charges of criminal breach of trust (CBT) and three charges of money laundering.
