Najib Razak, the former Malaysian prime minister convicted of money laundering linked to the 1MDB embezzlement scandal, has lost a final bid to overturn his 12-year prison sentence.
Malaysia’s highest court on Tuesday upheld Najib’s conviction on seven counts of abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust.
Najib, who had been out on bail and remained a member of parliament for Malaysia’s governing United Malays National Organisation, was taken into custody immediately after the ruling.
The embezzlement of billions of dollars from the 1MDB state fund, revealed in 2015, was one of the world’s biggest financial scandals. It sent reverberations from Malaysia and Singapore to Wall Street and prompted Najib’s ousting as prime minister.
Najib was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail in 2020. The verdict was upheld by a court of appeal last year.
The case was seen as a test of Malaysia’s judicial system, especially after a US court in April convicted former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng of conspiring to violate US anti-bribery laws and to launder money in connection with the 1MDB scandal. US authorities dedicated years to bringing the case against Ng.
Najib, who has denied all wrongdoing and still has many supporters, had this year hit the campaign trail for Umno, which leads Malaysia’s ruling coalition.
On Tuesday, a five-member Federal Court bench chaired by chief justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat found that the Kuala Lumpur High Court had not erred in sentencing Najib to 12 years in jail and a 210mn ringgit ($47mn) fine. If Najib fails to pay the fine, a five-year jail sentence will be served in lieu.
The former prime minister, who led the government from 2009 to 2018, had sought to delay the ruling, including by calling on Tengku Maimun to recuse herself for previous Facebook comments attributed to her husband that were critical of Najib.
In a statement to the Federal Court on Tuesday, Najib referred to himself as a “pawn in a justice game”. The former prime minister’s lawyer Firoz Hussein Ahmad Jamaluddin expressed disappointment with the ruling.
“The position of Najib is that his new legal team did not have adequate time to put forward his defence . . . and was not given appropriate opportunity to defend himself at the appeal,” he said.
Prominent opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim in April warned that Najib could seek to capitalise on an Umno victory in an early general election to avoid imprisonment. The next election is set for 2023, but Anwar said some members of Najib’s party wanted to bring it forward so they could consolidate power and influence the judiciary.
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