Najib confirms he never filed police report on alleged forgery of his signature on 1MDB docs

Najib confirms he never filed police report on alleged forgery of his signature on 1MDB docs



Jailed former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is pictured at the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex, in Kuala Lumpur December 12, 2024. — Picture by Firdaus Latif

Monday, 20 Jan 2025 4:57 PM MYT


PUTRAJAYA, Jan 20 — Datuk Seri Najib Razak today confirmed he had never filed complaints with the police to say that he did not actually sign some 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) documents, despite having claimed that his signature was forged on these documents.

Today in the 1MDB trial, deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib asked: “Until now you have never lodged any police report that your signature is forged, that these signatures on these documents are false?”

Najib merely replied “yes” very softly and nodded.

Najib was testifying in his own defence in the 1MDB trial, where over RM2 billion of 1MDB’s funds were alleged to have entered his personal bank accounts.

Today, Akram questioned Najib on the eight 1MDB documents, which the former prime minister said did not carry his signature and instead had forged signatures.

Akram said Najib had at the prosecution stage failed to challenge any prosecution witness on the authenticity of these signatures on six of the documents, and that Najib had only at the defence stage claimed that these signatures were not his.

But Najib disagreed that his claim was an “afterthought”.

One of the eight 1MDB documents shown to Najib today was an October 16, 2009 minutes of an alleged meeting he had as 1MDB’s board of advisers’ chairman with then 1MDB CEO Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi.

Previously, Najib had told the court that the signature in this document was not his, saying that his signature is “basic and simple” and can be easily replicated with enough practice, but that the alleged forged signature here was “far from perfect”.

But Najib denied that he was changing his position from acknowledging that he had signed this document at the prosecution stage, and instead insisted that he had not signed this.

“No, I disagree, because when you look at that signature, it’s very weird. Here it says meeting of chairman of board of advisers, doesn’t even say where. I mean when you record meetings, you normally have the place of meeting — that’s one.

“Number two, how can I have meeting with Shahrol, just the two of us? Who did the minutes? It didn’t take place,” he said as he claimed that the meeting recorded in the 1MDB document did not even take place.

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