[ad_1]
PUTRAJAYA: Former Prime Minister Najib Razak has raised 307 grounds in his appeal petition on his conviction in the SRC International case.
Among the reasons given are that the trial judge (Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali) had been wrong in his conclusions when calling Najib to defend his abuse of power, criminal abuse of trust and money laundering charges, in addition to later declaring it guilty.
Nazlan had sentenced Najib on July 28 to 12 years in prison for abuse of power, as well as another 10 years in prison for criminal breach of trust and money laundering of SRC International’s RM42 million funds. The sentences had to be executed at the same time. The court also fined him RM210 million.
In his petition, Najib also claimed that the judge had not taken into account his defense that Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, had “tricked” him and “manipulated” his bank accounts.
“The court had been wrong to conclude that Jho Low, Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil (former executive director of SRC International) and Azlin Alias (then Najib’s chief private secretary) were responsible for managing the prime minister’s accounts,” he said. Najib.
He also contested Nazlan’s finding on “donation letters”, where the court said that Najib’s testimony that the money was a donation from King Abdullah was “selfish.”
“The judge had wrongly concluded that the money transfers between 2011 and 2013 were not from King Abdullah, as the bank transactions did not show the name of the late Saudi ruler,” Najib said.
His lawyer, Harvinderjit Singh, said the appeal petition was filed on October 19, after the Court of Appeals granted the legal team a 30-day extension in September to file the petition.
According to court procedure, the defense has 10 days to file the appeal petition after receiving the appeal records.
The case will be mentioned before the Court of Appeal on December 23.
