00:00Justice Datuk Colin Lawrence Sequeira spent a total of five hours to read the High Court's
00:07verdict in the high-profile 1MDB tenor corruption trial involving former Prime Minister Datuk
00:14Seri Najib Razak on Friday.
00:16Sequeira found Najib guilty of all 25 charges, including four abuse of power charges and
00:2321 counts of money laundering involving 2.3 billion ringgit from 1MDB funds.
00:30Sequeira, in his broad grounds of judgment, said the defense had failed to raise a reasonable
00:35doubt in the prosecution's case.
00:38He said there was overwhelming cogent evidence, both direct and indirect, which led to the
00:43inevitable conclusion.
00:45The offenses took place at an Amislamic bank branch with the monies transferred between
00:49Najib's bank account, two companies and checks issued to an UMNO branch and an individual,
00:55as well as Tanore Finance Corporation, owned by Eric Tan, who was an associate of fugitive
01:00businessman Joe Lowe between February 2011 and December 2014.
01:07Sequeira called Najib's defense of the Arab donation not meritorious.
01:12He said the four letters Najib claimed were from Saudi Arabia were forgeries, as the originals
01:18were never produced before the court.
01:20Najib, in his defense, testified that during a 2010 meeting, the late Saudi ruler King Abdullah
01:28had pledged financial support to him, ranging from 50 million pound to 800 million U.S. dollars.
01:34Sequeira said the accused was consistent in his belief that he was receiving funds from
01:39Saudi Arabia, but no verification was conducted to confirm the source of the funds.
01:44He added that it defies reasonable belief that there was no proper and transparent accounting
01:49conducted, despite having a colossal amount of money remitted into Najib's bank account,
01:55in the name of a political donation.
01:58The seven-year trial involved 50 witnesses and nine days of oral submissions by the prosecution.
02:05Najib is presently incarcerated at Kajang Prison, where he is serving a reduced six-year jail sentence,
02:11for the misappropriation of 42 million Ringgit from the SRC international phase of the 1MDB scandal.
