Shafee: 1MDB charges against Najib 'all wrong'

Shafee: 1MDB charges against Najib 'all wrong'

Published: Apr 23, 2024 3:16 PM


1MDB TRIAL | The 25 1MDB criminal charges against Najib Abdul Razak are “all wrong”, the Kuala Lumpur High Court heard.

Najib’s lead defence counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah raised the contention during today’s RM2.27 billion 1MDB graft trial against the former prime minister, concerning four abuse of power charges and 21 money laundering counts.

The veteran legal practitioner was informing trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah about the defence team’s intent to attack the legality of the criminal charges during oral submissions to be scheduled near the end of the prosecution’s case.

The matter is currently on full trial since 2019, and the prosecution has yet to close the case against Najib. Only upon the prosecutors closing their case can the criminal court schedule the oral submission stage (which does not involve witness testimonies, with both prosecution and defence then summing up their arguments based on the evidence presented thus far).

“The subject matter on all the charges will be a huge part (of oral submissions), that the charges are all wrong,” Shafee said.

Double jeopardy

The lead defence counsel added that the criminal charges are defective as they involve the issue of duplicity and multiplicity.

Duplicity is when two or more offences are mentioned in a single charge. There is a legal prohibition against introducing more than one alleged offence in a single charge.

Multiplicity refers to when a single offence is charged in more than one count. The law forbids multiplicitous charges because they can result in an accused being punished more than once for the same offence, thus violating the principle of double jeopardy.

Double jeopardy refers to a situation where an accused is prosecuted more than once for the same alleged offence.

The trial before judge Sequerah continues today.

Najib is on trial for four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering involving RM2.27 billion from 1MDB.

For the four abuse of power charges, the former Pekan MP is alleged to have committed the offences at AmIslamic Bank Bhd’s Jalan Raja Chulan branch in Bukit Ceylon, Kuala Lumpur, between Feb 24, 2011, and Dec 19, 2014.

On the 21 money laundering counts, Najib is purported to have committed the offences at the same bank between March 22, 2013, and Aug 30, 2013.

1MDB is fully owned by the Minister of Finance Incorporated.

Najib was chairperson of 1MDB’s board of advisers.