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KUALA LUMPUR: The prosecution in Najib Razak’s 1MDB trial today urged the High Court to give the former prime minister a stern warning for “launching attacks” against prosecution witness Zeti Akhtar Aziz.
Ad hoc prosecutor Gopal Sri Ram told Judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah that the former Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) had been listed as one of the prosecution’s witnesses.
“We take a strong exception to this. And the defendant’s statements on Facebook have made her (Zeti) respond.
“We had given the defense list of witnesses in August 2019, and the defendant knew that she would be called as a witness,” Sri Ram said, urging the court to warn Najib not to “attack” Zeti further.
Najib’s lawyer, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, told the court that the defense wanted to respond to the matter accordingly.
“I just received this notice from the prosecution this morning. I would like to submit to the law regarding this matter, ”he said, urging the court to reserve it for another day.
Sequerah responded by saying that it will hear presentations from both parties on Thursday.
Recently, the MalaysiaToday portal, led by blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, claimed that members of Zeti’s family, her husband and two children, had received more than RM100 million in funding from businessman Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, the mastermind behind the 1MDB scandal.
According to the publication, Zeti’s relatives allegedly executed a legal statement (SD) in which they admitted to having received millions of ringgit in Singapore bank accounts, and the money came from a company linked to Low.
Najib urged Zeti to speak out against the allegations, citing that she issued a statement in May 2018 stating that she was unaware of any funds or transactions in her bank accounts.
Najib claimed that he was surprised by the statement, as Zeti was the one who advised him to open an account under his own name.
“How could a BNM governor not know that billions of foreign funds are flowing into a prime minister’s account, when every major transaction from abroad requires BNM approval?” he said.
In a statement, Zeti denied the allegations and said she could not comment further as she was a possible witness at Najib 1MDB’s trial.
