Malaysia’s top court upholds ex-PM Najib Razak’s conviction and 12-year jail sentence in graft case

Razak’s loss in final appeal means he will be the first former prime minister to be jailed

Malaysia’s top court on Tuesday upheld former prime minister Najib Razak’s conviction and 12-year jail sentence in a graft case linked to the looting of the 1MDB state fund.

This “historic judgment” makes Mr Razak the first prime minister to be jailed and he will have to begin serving his sentence immediately.

The five-member federal court said that they found the high court order right and that the former prime minister’s appeal was “devoid of any merits”.

“We find the appeal devoid of any merits. We find the conviction and sentence to be safe,” Chief Justice Maimun Tuan Mat said.

Interestingly, Mr Razak had earlier in his appeal said that the husband of Chief Justice Tuan Mat – who was leading the five-member Federal Court bench – had been critical of his leadership over the 1MDB scandal.

The former prime minister had claimed that she may not be partial and hence had appealed to remove Judge Tuan Mat in a graft case linked to the massive looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad state fund.

The chief justice said that “it would have been a travesty of justice of the highest order if any reasonable tribunal, faced with such evidence staring it in the face, were to find that the appellant is not guilty of the seven charges preferred against him”.

A lower court in 2020 found the former prime minister guilty of abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust over the transfer of $10.1m from SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB, to his personal bank account.

Then, in December that year, an appellate court denied his appeal, prompting him to go to the federal court for a final recourse.

After the federal court gave its ruling, hundreds of supporters of Mr Razak thronged the streets outside the court, lamenting the order, Malay Mail reported.

Additional inputs from agencies